Abduction
by unslinky
Summary: Donna manages to persuade the Doctor to take her shopping, but trouble for the Doctor is not far behind him. Contains Doctor Whump.
1. Chapter 1

Donna was part way through between impressed and annoyed, and between relieved and disappointed. She shouldn't have expected as much from him, but she also knew that he had done better than she had thought he would. As far as she was concerned it was a genuine result in itself. The Doctor had taken her shopping, and not on some mysterious planet halfway across the galaxy, it wasn't even on one of the 39th century shopping satellites orbiting the moon (though they were fun and full of bargains, or at least she was told they were bargains, she wasn't entirely sure how their credit system worked and the Doctor had not complained at the cost).

They were shopping in Kingston, a normal town centre not far from Chiswick, where she sought some normal Earth bound gifts for her mother's birthday. An event that she would not miss even if it was not top of her list of things to do, and, as she had advised the Doctor if she was going to have to visit with her mother on her birthday then she was not going to go empty handed and if she was going to have to endure that without the Doctor's company (she knew better than to ask), he could at least come to the shops with her. At least with the TARDIS they could avoid Saturday shopping and instead had arrived on Wednesday morning.

He had survived both River Island and Next and he had even picked up a few things to look at from the home section in BHS, but that was as far as his interest and his patience had stretched. When it came to shopping Donna mused that the Doctor was no different from other men. He hated it and it bored him and it irritated him and why did they now have to go and look in John Lewis's? Surely there was something suitable there?

They walked through to the main shopping centre and through the back up a glass lift to the third floor and then into the Bentall's shopping centre. "You can go and get a cup of tea if you like?" Donna offered as the Doctor tried his best not to show his disdain at yet another large department store yet could not have looked more like a disgruntled six year old if he tried as he kicked at the floor with his Converse and pouted over the side of the landing looking down on the racks of clothing or up at over-priced soft furnishings.

He absently wondered if he could blow this one up just for the Hell of it? There were shop dummies in there and even if they were not Autons there was always the remote risk that under the right circumstances they could be reanimated and therefore they were a threat? He perked up slightly at the offer of tea as Donna got her wallet out from her jeans. She knew he wouldn't have any money that he could actually spend on contemporary Earth and she wasn't having him rob another cash point just for tea.

"Doctor?" Donna got his attention with a five pound note. "You'll be able to get a cup of tea and a slice of cake for that," Donna offered. "The café is just up on the top floor. I won't be long and I'll join you and then we can go and get some lunch somewhere? There is a nice Italian at the other end of the high street?" she offered.

"The other end of the High Street we just walked down to get here?" the Doctor asked her.

"Yeah," Donna confirmed and swatted at him when he tutted. "You spend your life running you can't tell me that walking one end of a street to another has worn you out?" she challenged him.

"It's not the walking," he muttered.

"Tea and cake?" She waved the fiver in front of him.

"Thank you," he took the money. "Where is the café again?"

"Up the escalators to the top floor and then to the right, you can't miss it," Donna reminded him of where the café was. "I'll see you shortly."

The Doctor made his retreat. He went up the escalator backward watching Donna as she twisted and turned through the rails of clothing like an expert. Every time he had turned or moved he seemed to have been grounded in the hip with a metal rail or ended up knocking some sort of dress off the rail to crumple on the floor and then because Donna simply would not allow him to leave it he'd have to get it to stay on the hanger again and hang it back up, usually turning into another rail and losing something else into a heap on the floor. He hated shopping and it seemed that shopping hated him. Yet Donna moved amongst the rails with ease. Her fiery hair meant she was easy to keep track of as she took on the entire market in fashion to find her mother the perfect gift, even though she knew her mother was just likely to exchange it.

He watched her until he reached the top of the escalator and then he almost fell off it backwards as his heels ground on the lip under which the step he was standing on disappeared. His Converse squeaked audibly as he grappled to right himself and then straighten himself out. He glanced around to make sure no one had noticed. A young shop assistant in a black and white uniform not dissimilar to Henrik's was trying desperately not to show that she had not only noticed but been amused. The girl had mousy shoulder length hair but she had a kind face and she was not much older than Rose had been when the Doctor met her. His hearts sighed for a moment, but then he couldn't help but laugh. "I should probably look where I'm going," he commented to the girl as he passed her.

"I would recommend that, Sir," she agreed and then laughed. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I'm looking for the café?" he offered and waved the fiver like it was his week's pocket money. "I have been relieved from shopping duties for tea and cake," he advised keenly.

"It's just up the next escalator and then to the right," the shop assistant offered. "Or, there is a lift just over there if you think that might be safer?"

"Tricky those escalator things," the Doctor commented and laughed.

"They can be," she agreed.

"Thank you for your help, Alex," the Doctor offered noting her name on her badge. She smiled and he bounded off towards the next escalator. He travelled up it forward this time. When he got to the top he went to the railing and looked down. "Made it!" he called down to Alex. She laughed and gave him a thumbs up as he turned to the right and headed toward the café.

As he went to the café entrance he paused and looked down over the railing again. The floor space on each of the levels was slightly smaller so he could see into the second floor and the first and then the ground floor formed the central circle right down below in the food court. He couldn't see Donna anywhere and Alex had returned to her job of changing some a display over to some new promotional device that was supposed to… oh, it was a new kind of T-shirt bra. Lift, support, and separate with an invisible comfort?

He was about to go and get his well-deserved cup of tea when he saw three men moving around through the furniture level below. They caught his eye. They were not furniture shopping they were carrying out discrete scans. He moved around the barrier above to get a better look at what they were looking for. The scanner they had in their hands was not contemporary nor was it from Earth. From above he could see that they had small bony protrusions along the back of their necks. They were fairly well covered by the collared shirts they were wearing, and unless actually looking at them from above, as he was, no one would have noticed that they also had three crowns on their head. Their thick hair was combed in waves away from the three spirals.

"Bylaxians?" the Doctor commented to himself. "What are Bylaxians scanning for in a shopping centre in Kingston?" He got his sonic screwdriver out and he discretely scanned them as they carried out their discrete scans. There was an alert on their scanner as they did.

"Upstairs," one of them advised. "It is upstairs. It is coming from directly above us. Not moving."

The Doctor ducked back away from the railing as the tallest Bylaxian with the scanner looked up. What could they be scanning for that was above them and not moving? The Doctor looked around him. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary there. Just the entrance to the café and the toy section and it wasn't even good toys, it was baby toys for very young babies. Lego, he liked Lego, but apparently human babies ate that so it wasn't going to be in there. He didn't think eating Lego was very smart. Maybe the Bylaxians were scanning for Lego? Or maybe? He sighed and scratched his head. Maybe he wasn't going to be getting his cup of tea and his cake any time soon and they were in fact scanning for him.

There was one way to find that out. The Doctor moved away and went over to where Alex had told him the lift was. He got in the lift and held the door open until he saw that the three Bylaxians had got on the escalator and were travelling upward. He then sent the lift down a level and got out of it. At the top of the escalator the Bylaxian scanned again. His suspicion was correct. They were scanning for him or something he was carrying. He didn't have anything in his pockets that he normally wouldn't have.

The Doctor looked up to them as the Bylaxians looked down. They made eye contact and the Doctor watched as they pointed at him. One of them went on the escalator back down and two of them started to run down the steps. The Doctor hurried away from the lift. There was a link from that level away from the shopping centre. Bylaxians weren't known as being a violent or particularly aggressive race but they weren't known for spending much time off world either. He didn't know why they would be there but if there was any risk at all he would rather they were somewhere quiet rather than in the shopping centre.

The corridor passed over the main road and he could see the traffic beneath them. There were shopping displays of all the over priced goods and the special deals available in the shopping centre and someone had posted a colourful A3 poster about an up and coming dance with a list of celebrity DJ's that he had never heard of nor was likely to hear of again. There was no one else in the foyer beyond the footbridge. It had led them into the car park foyer where the pay machines were. He glanced around. There was CCTV there but there was no one else in the area. He sparked the camera out with the sonic screwdriver as he once again undertook the role of public menace.

The Bylaxians made their way into the foyer area. One of them immediately went behind the Doctor to block his exit into the multi-storey car park but he was not interested in escaping. He didn't think he would need to. He didn't understand what they would be doing but they were Bylaxian. He'd not be in any danger from Bylaxians but what were they doing on Earth? If they were discovered then they could be the ones in danger and that would also put him in danger.

"Hello?" the Doctor greeted them trying to sound pleasant rather than wary. "I take it that you are looking for me?" he asked them.

"You are a difficult man to find, Doctor," the tallest of the three Bylaxians commented. He stood close to seven foot and was broad shouldered. He was a pretty big man even for a Bylaxian who tended to average larger than the average human male.

"You're a Bylaxian scout group?" the Doctor checked with them. "What would you be looking for me for?" he asked them.

"You need to come with us."

"That would be rather inconvenient. You see I'm here shopping. With a friend. It is her mother's birthday at the weekend and we need to get her a gift and well, I was just on my way for tea and cake. There is only so much shopping that I can take, though I understand the markets on Bylax are fairly spectacular? It is not somewhere I have been before, and unfortunately not somewhere I will be going today. I decline your offer," the Doctor advised and bowed his head slightly.

"It is not an offer," the Bylaxian behind the Doctor stated. "You will be coming with us."

"Perhaps this is something we can discuss?" the Doctor suggested.

"There will be no discussion," the Bylaxian advised. "You will either come with us willingly or you will come with us against your will. Either way you will be coming with us."

"Now just wait a minute. You can't come waltzing into a shopping centre and just kidnap a man while he is shopping?" the Doctor suggested. "Why do you want me to go with you?"

"There will be no questions. You will come with us."

"Oh, you obviously haven't done your research, well, you must have done in order to find me. Nice bit of scanning you did there. What were you scanning for?" the Doctor asked and glanced at the scanner. "Two hearts?" the Doctor asked. "Well, I guess that makes sense. I have two hearts, you have two hearts, well, actually six considering there are three of you. Scanning for the familiar in a planet of single hearted beings," the Doctor suggested. "That is as far as your research has gone, because if you think you can come here and not have me ask you questions then you are sorely…"

"We do not have the time for this," the smaller of the Bylaxians who was still several inches taller and likely fifty pounds heavier than the Doctor commented. He glanced at the tallest with the scanner and received a nod of consent. The Doctor managed to duck away from the first strike with a small baton. It had been aimed at his head and he had felt it coming rather than seen it. It struck his shoulder and sent a shocking numbing pain shooting down through his arm. He spun around just in time to see a flash of red as the second blow with the cosh struck him on the head. His senses sparked out immediately as he crumpled to the ground.

The tallest of the Bylaxians opened a lid on his watch and spoke into it. "The mission has been a success. We have him."


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't long that Donna had sent the Doctor off to stop sulking and have himself a cup of tea and a piece of cake that she realised that sounded better than to continue looking for a gift. She could just get her mother a gift card and let her pick herself. Of course that would probably be greeted with some kind of rebuke since it was the easiest option, but then for the last twenty years her gifts had been exchanged so it was just cutting out the middle man. That was it. Decision made. She would get her a gift card and she'd go up and celebrate that victory with the Doctor and a piece of cake. They did a peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake in there and a huge slab of that was in order.

Donna went up the three levels on the escalator and went into the café. She expected the Doctor to be sweet talking the assistant in there in or something or to be sitting tucking into cake and talking to another customer. He always seemed to have someone to talk to and when he struck up conversation with a stranger he was rarely met with a 'leave me alone' attitude. There was just something about the gregarious spirit of the Time Lord that drew people to him.

The Doctor wasn't in the café. If he had demolished his tea and cake that quickly and then ducked out to get back to the TARDIS then she was going to kill him. She went into the bathroom. There was a single unisex cubicle and it was open so he hadn't gone in there. She went to the counter. "Can I help you?" the young male assistant asked her.

"Have you seen a guy in here?" Donna asked him. "In the last ten minutes or so. Tall and wearing a brown suit? He'd have made sure he got the biggest bit of cake possible even if he's so skinny you'd want to force feed him the whole thing to make sure he didn't disappear into nothing?"

"No ma'am, no one fitting that description has been in."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, ma'am, we've only served him in the last hour. It's slow this morning," he added. Donna looked at the grey haired man with a large wheeled rollator full of shopping bags. He had a latte and what looked like the remains of half a teacake.

"Okay, thanks," Donna acknowledged and puzzled. "If he does come in? Can you tell him to wait here for me?"

"Certainly, Ma'am, what is his name?"

"He's called the Doctor," Donna told him. There was a look of puzzlement on the man's face. "Yeah, I know, listen, just tell him that Donna is looking for him and he is to stay here until I get back?"

"I will," he confirmed. Donna left the café. She went over to the railing and looked down. She could see right around the top level and there wasn't anything there that would have interested the Doctor. It was all baby stuff. There were some more age appropriate toys on the level below, and by age appropriate she meant they were from the ages of 6 to 12. She thought he might have been distracted there and she went back down a level. He wasn't in the toys. She went back to the railing and ran her hand through her red hair as she looked around.

"Can I help you with anything?" a shop assistant asked her. She could see that Donna was looking like either she was lost or she had lost something or someone. It wasn't unusual for people to lose their bearings in the shop. She still did on occasion after working there for over a year. Things would get moved round and new displays would go up and all the points of reference were changed. She was sure that the bosses did that so people would end up spending more time walking aimlessly through sections in the hopes that they bought something they did not want, but if that was a marketing ploy then it didn't work as people just ended up getting annoyed with it.

"I'm looking for my friend," Donna commented. "I sent him up to the café and he's not in there."

"Is he a tall good looking guy?" the shop assistance asked.

"He's tall," Donna offered and thought for a moment.

"Brown suit and big hair?"

"Yeah, that is him," Donna confirmed and then looked at the shop assistant. "You think he's good looking?" she checked with her.

"Yeah, don't you?"

"No!" Donna scoffed and laughed. "And he's in big trouble when I find him. He was supposed to be in the café and he's not."

"He did go up there," the shop assistant commented. "He almost fell off the first escalator because he wasn't looking where he was going. We talked for a moment and he seemed nice," she offered. "He went up the escalator to the top level where the café is, but then I saw him come back down onto this level in the lift a few minutes later. I thought he must have changed his mind as he headed out over the footbridge toward the car park."

"I wonder what has got into him?" Donna suggested. "Thanks." She went over to the footbridge leading into the multi-storey car park. She looked down on the traffic below. There was no sign of the Doctor on the footbridge. He'd not go into the car park as a way back to the TARDIS, he had parked that beyond the train station right at the other end of the town. It was going to be a fair walk to get there. She hoped that he was feeling okay, the only thing she could think of coming into the car park was fresh air. The shopping centre was quite warm and she knew he didn't enjoy shopping, she just didn't know why he'd have found it so necessary to escape.

She passed the statue of Mr. Frank Bentall who originally opened the department store in 1867 and was immortalised in bronze. She had thought that the Doctor may have been there having a read through the plaques she had almost memorised by all the times she'd paused to wait in that spot for her mother to catch her up on family shopping trips, but the Time Lord was not there. Beyond him there was the foyer where at the weekend there would be a queue several people deep waiting to pay for the car park and growing frustrated when the machine either accepted correct change only or spat out valid coins again because it didn't like them for some reason. The automation of systems not always making them quicker and easier to manage.

Donna continued through around the corner. She was surprised to see that the Doctor was there by the paying machines, but more surprised to see that he was surrounded by three massive guys, and they were massive. So massive that Donna's first thought was that they weren't human, and that was before she considered that their pale pink skin might have actually had a slight greenish tinge to it. Like a portrait where an artist had tried to put too many green shadows in and made the subject look ill rather than three dimensional. She would have through that the Doctor was just talking to them, but then why were they on all three sides of him. The Doctor appeared to be gesticulating as he spoke in a manner which Donna knew was putting him under stress even if he did still have a disarming smile on his face. He was addressing the largest of the three men.

Donna went to step forward and find out what was going on when the conversation took a heart stopping turn. The largest one nodded to the smallest one when he said something and a metal looking club was pulled from his belt hidden beneath the long tunic that he was carrying. He swiped at the Doctor with a significant force, but the Doctor ducked under it. He still received a blow that Donna knew had to have hurt him as it staggered him. Donna rushed forward as the Doctor spun round. She didn't know what she thought she could do when they were so big, but she knew the Doctor had seen her. It was too late though as he received a second blow and he collapsed to the floor immediately unconscious.

"The mission has been a success. We have him." Donna was close enough to hear the taller of the three men state that into his watch. It couldn't have been a watch.

"Leave him alone!" Donna yelled at the top of her voice and hurried toward them, but the three men held hands in a circle around the Doctor. A strange energy seemed to curtain down around them, sparking white, yellow, and red. It circled at ground level and then it drew back upward again. When the bright light that had made Donna squint away had gone she turned and they were gone. The Doctor was gone. They had taken him! They had hit him and hurt him and they had taken him.

Panic descended onto Donna for a moment. She didn't have a clue what she could do. She didn't know who they were. She didn't know what they wanted with the Doctor. She didn't know what kind of technology it was that had taken him. She had seen a teleport before. She had even used a teleport before, but the device the Sontarans used was totally different. She had never seen anything like that. She didn't know what it was. The only person that she could immediately think of to tell her was gone and now she was stranded in Kingston. The TARDIS was right the way over by the train station and what good was that going to do her? She couldn't fly it. She didn't even have her Oyster card to get home and what would she do there? She knew that he needed her help. She couldn't just abandon him. She needed her help and to give that she needed help.

Her hands were shaking when she got her phone out. She wanted to ring her grandfather, but that was not going to do any good. They would both be worrying and Gramps loved and trusted the Doctor but he wasn't going to be able to track a teleport, it if was a teleport, or know anyone who did. She went past his number in her phone menu toward her newest contact and a friend she had made for life. Someone who she could actually talk to about her adventures with the Doctor and who understood that there was a dark and dangerous side to it in a way that her grandfather could not be allowed to know. She dialled the number before she had worked out what to say and before she had calmed. She didn't know if she had time to calm down or not. What if they had taken him to kill him?

"Doctor Martha Jones?" Martha answered the phone. "Is that you, Donna?" she checked seeing the caller ID but knowing that the Doctor had used her phone as Donna carried hers and the Doctor left his sitting on the console apparently charging.

"Martha!" Donna exclaimed. "They've taken him!"

"The Doctor?" Martha asked though she didn't think it would be anyone different.

"There were three of them and he was supposed to be in the café having tea because he hates shopping but when I went to get him he wasn't there and then a girl told me where he was and I found him and there were three of them and they were big and they hit him and then they took him!"

"Where are you?" Martha asked praying that they weren't on another planet somewhere because then she really didn't know what she was going to be able to do to help.

"The Bentall Centre in Kingston," Donna told her.

"How did they take him?"

"I don't know, it was some kind of energy force field thing, like a teleport? It came down over them and then it was gone and so were they. They vanished."

"Okay, so they have advanced technologies then," Martha concluded. "Were they human?"

"I don't think so. They were big, too big to be humans I think. I am not sure. They looked a little bit bluish too. I don't know what to do. What should I do? They hit him Martha. On the shoulder I think but then on the head and he went down. He was out cold or he was… he was out cold," she repeated not willing to think about the alternative.

"Where are you?"

"I told you, in Kingston."

"No, where exactly are you?"

"In the car park ticket hall on the way from the Bentall Centre into the car park by the footbridge," Donna advised.

"Okay, I know it," Martha offered. "I am coming down with a team. Do not go anywhere. I will be ask quick as I possibly can be."

"What should I do?" Donna asked her.

"Just try to remember as many details as you can. About the energy field. About the people that took the Doctor. About anything that was said or done. We need as much information as we can get. I am going to get another agency involved as well. We will get him back," Martha told Donna.

"How long are you going to be?" Donna asked her.

"Not long. We will be coming in by air. Stay where you are and try not to panic."

"I should never have made him come shopping," Donna commented quietly.


	3. Chapter 3

It was less than half an hour before Donna heard the steady thwump thwump thwump of a helicopter coming in to land. She had no idea where they were going to land in the middle of Kingston but she hoped that it was Martha and UNIT. A few minutes later Martha came running down from the car park. There was a whole UNIT of people and they seemed to know what they were doing. The cordoned off the passage from the Bentall Centre into the actual car park and then they started to take scans of the air around the area where Donna said that the teleport had been. They took swabs of the floor and of the air.

"Are you okay?" Martha asked Donna. She could see she was shaken and upset and worried.

"I shouldn't have left him. I shouldn't have made him come. He hates shopping and…"

"This is not your fault," Martha advised Donna. "If someone was after him then they would have got hold of him no matter where you were."

"They were after him," Donna commented. "I heard one of them say that their mission had been a success and they had him?"

"Hopefully they want something off him then and they aren't just going to kill him outright," Martha offered trying to be pragmatic, but clearly putting another horror into Donna's mind. Would someone just want to kill him? There were species who would just want to kill him weren't there? Even if they didn't want to kill him what if they were running a mission for someone who did want to kill him.

"Anything?" Martha asked one of the soldiers who was scanning the area.

"We are picking up an energy trace, Ma'am," he confirmed. "There is a high level of ionisation in this area. It is dissipating, but it would suggest a high energy transfer took place. It's nothing that we are intimately familiar with, Ma'am, but something happened here."

"Something did happen here!" Donna yelled. "The Doctor was kidnapped here!"

"Yes ma'am," the soldier confirmed and nodded.

"We will find him," Martha assured Donna. "Package the data and send it through to this number," Martha instructed and shared a number with the soldier from her phone. She then picked it up and dialled the same number.

"Voice of a nightingale?" Jack commented. "How are you doing?"

"We've got a situation, Jack," Martha told him not wasting time.

"Oh? What kind of a situation?"

"It appears that the Doctor has been kidnapped."

"What?!" Jack exclaimed horrified by the idea. "Where from? What planet is he on?"

"From Earth, Jack. He was taken right from under our noses. He was shopping with Donna in Kingston and she saw him get taken."

"Donna, she is his latest companion isn't she? I've not met her yet. What happened?"

"She says that she sent him to get a cup of tea because he was bored with shopping."

"I can't imagine that took long," Jack commented.

"No, I don't think it did. He went to get a cup of tea but when she went to catch up with him in the café he wasn't there. She said that she was directed by another girl to where she had seen the Doctor go. He was down by the car parking pay metres and that there were three large individuals around him. She said that he got hit twice and he got knocked out and then they seemed to use some kind of energy transfer system such as a teleport to take him."

"Okay, a teleport of some kind?" Jack stated thoughtfully. "Have you got the facility to scan the energy traces?" he asked. "Do a scan and send the details through. Maybe we can trace the source or the destination or at least the type of device used."

"Already done, Captain," Martha advised him. "The scanned data is on its way to you. It is not coming up with a hit from UNIT so it's not a device regularly used on Earth. We need to find him and we need to get him back."

"Are we sure he wasn't just really bored with the shopping?" Jack asked. Martha couldn't help a slight chuckle at that, but she knew how worried Donna was.

"He got hit," Martha reminded Jack. "He could be hurt."

"I will get on the trace."

Jack had been down in his basement office when his phone rang. There was some energy data showing on his desktop and he went up to the main area. "Gwen! Ianto! We've got work to do," Jack advised them. They came over from what they had been doing. Thankfully the rift had been quiet for a few days so they weren't being dragged away from anything too important. "We have an energy signal we need to trace," Jack advised. "We need origin if possible and we also need source and destination. Hopefully they are one and the same."

"Where is the data?" Ianto asked.

"I've had it sent through," Jack commented. "It's on the desktop. Let me just pull it out. I may recognise the signature?" he offered. He had intimate knowledge of many teleports. The most familiar to him would be recognisable based on the signature of the feed providing the data was taken early. Time was ticking away from them fast especially with the Doctor kidnapped. It was going to be hard to focus and to concentrate on doing the work they needed to find him as Jack was already worrying about all the different things they could be doing to him. There was no point him wondering who would want to harm or to take the Doctor, there were hundreds of species and individuals who could benefit from either having a Time Lord or having the Doctor or would maximise the potential by acknowledging they had both.

Jack looked at the data as it came up. The energy field had a high level ionisation trace. That was good. It meant it was a low power teleport but it also meant that they weren't cloaking their technologies. Either they didn't have the technology themselves to do that, or, they didn't think contemporary humans would have the technology to conduct a trace. They shouldn't have the technology to conduct a trace, but Torchwood did. He didn't recognise the actual signature itself, it seemed to have a strontium gate. That would have given it a reddish tone as the energy ionised. Red teleports were very rare. They were cheap to run but they didn't have a very large range. That was good. He didn't think the Doctor could have been transported anywhere off planet. They may have made it to a ship in low orbit, but no further than that.

"Martha, you still there?" Jack checked as he had kept the line to her open.

"I'm here," Martha confirmed.

"Have UNIT been tracing any incursions into orbit?"

"I will check," Martha offered.

"They can't have taken him further than a low orbit with a strontium gate teleport. Can you check with Donna that the teleport had a red hue to the energy?" Jack asked her.

"I will." Martha turned to Donna. She had moved to squat down to sit on the low barrier running around the base of the foyer. There was nothing else she could do. "Donna? Jack is trying to identify the type of teleport used. He is asking if the energy was red."

"Yeah," Donna confirmed. "Some of it was. It came down over them and it was sparking in white and yellow, then it was red when it swirled around them, and then as it raised up again and they were gone it went back to white and yellow," she explained.

"Did you hear that Jack?" Martha checked.

"Loud and clear, thank you," Jack confirmed. "It's definitely a strontium gate teleport. Quite a standard one according to that," he offered. "What did the people that took him look like? Did they have any markings or were they wearing any kind of uniform? Did they have any tools on them? Anything that can be used to try and identify them?"

"They were big but they generally looked human," Martha confirmed and Donna nodded her agreement. "What about colouring Donna, did they have the same colour hair or anything?"

"They all had black hair, it was very dark and it was coarse and wavy. Their skin was very white though, it was almost kind of a green colour in places too as if they looked sick. I don't know what that was," Donna offered. "They were big a strong though and they were all wearing black tunics and sandy coloured trousers," she advised. "I don't know if that is a uniform or fashion."

"Were there any emblems on it?"

"Not that I saw. One of them had a scanner. He was the one who said that their mission had been a success, and he was the one who talked into his watch thing and got the teleport to work," Donna advised remembering more details. "It was the littler one that hit him and he used a device that looked like a club. It was bright silver in colour and it was short and it had a handle and a thicker end. He was hit with it twice," Donna offered. "He went down so hard."

"We will find him and make sure that he is alright," Martha told Donna though she had her own fears. If he had received a severe blow to the head as it sounded then they needed to get to him as quickly as possible in case there was any damage to be dealt with.

"Jack?" Gwen got his attention as she worked on the computer with Ianto to try to find out where the energy trace had come from. "I think we have it," she commented. "The source of the energy? There was an energy surge with the same traces of strontium."

"When?"

"Forty two minutes ago," Ianto advised. "Does that coincide with the Doctor's abduction?"

"I think so," Jack confirmed. "Martha, have you not got any CCTV in that area?"

"I've got a unit team pulling that now so we can look at it," Martha confirmed. "I've had an initial report that says that the CCTV actually in this area has been malfunctioning, but we are pulling all the store footage to see if we can locate the people responsible on the feed. That may help us identify the species and then the source?"

"I hope so," Jack agreed. "Gwen, where are you picking the signal up?"

"About seventy five miles off the Northern Coast of Alaska," Gwen advised.

"At sea?"

"Yes, within the Arctic Circle," Ianto confirmed on her behalf. "There must be a ship out there. I am going to attempt to access all shipping lane data in that region," he offered and Jack nodded. "It doesn't correspond with a known island."

"See what satellite footage we can get out there as well," Jack confirmed. "Martha?" he used the link through to there as well. "We think there may be some kind of ship out by Alaska where the signal has come from."

"It's not a usual shipping lane. There are no cargo ships using that line," Ianto offered.

"It will be quiet then," Gwen offered. "Easy to hide?"

"Easier to hide if we're not looking, easier to locate if we are," Jack advised. "Get a fix on any vessel out in that region. Scan them for any unusual energy signatures or strontium deposits and scan them for anything else that can be associated with extra-terrestrial activities. The usual, all frequencies, please." Jack knew that his team could look for alien activities and if there were aliens using alien technology on an alien on a ship in the middle of the ocean then they would be able to find it.

"Jack, if he is all the way out there how long is it going to take us to get to him?" Martha asked.

"You need to find out what resources UNIT are going to make available," Jack advised. "We don't want to have to rely on commercial airlines to get over there. That will take too long."

"Find him," Martha offered. "I will get us what we need." She turned to Donna who was feeling pretty useless as she couldn't do anything to find him. "It looks like the teleport at was activated from a ship that is off the coast of Alaska," Martha told her. "Jack is going to confirm that and then we will do whatever it takes to get out there and get him back."

"What do you need me to do?" Donna asked her.

"We need to think about seeing what the TARDIS can do to help and to secure her," Martha advised Donna and she nodded. "Can we get over there and see what she can do? Maybe she will be able to tell us where the Doctor is and who it is who took him. Where is the TARDIS?"

"It's all the way over at the back of the train station," Donna complained.

"That is okay, we will have some ground crew here by now," she offered. She got onto her radio and ordered a jeep up into the car park to pick them up. Donna and Martha got in it and they headed over to the TARDIS. All the time Martha and Jack maintained contact to ensure that they were keeping each other up to date.


	4. Chapter 4

Using the facilities available at Torchwood, information coming through on scans from UNIT controlled satellites that were ordinarily pointed at the stars but had been turned back onto their own planet, and information from the TARDIS they managed to locate the source of the teleport. It had been activated from a vessel of some kind that was at sea within the Arctic Ocean where it would not be interrupted. They got visual data of the vessel from the satellites and it seemed to be some kind of cargo liner. It was large and although there was nothing on the deck, it looked like there was plenty of space below the deck. They had seen no persons on board and could not identify the ship by name or number. They did not alert the coast guard to it. They did not know what the ship was doing with the Doctor and they didn't want anything horrible to happen to him, or to any coast guard officers, if the ship was boarded without proper planning.

UNIT were clearly anxious to get the Doctor back. They allowed Jack to take part in the plan learning from Martha that he would be invaluable and that he was a close personal friend of the Doctor. Donna was also being taken on the mission as a civilian observer having proven herself during the alert with the Sontarans. The Valiant was at their disposal and it was redirected, but to get to Alaska there was a need to travel across areas that were not UNIT controlled so there was some administrative duties to be done with that. The Valiant's top air speed would not see them reach Alaska for over 24 hours and the massive fuel consumption would mean that they would have to refuel three times to get there. It did not mean they did not want the resources of the Valiant, it just meant that they were not going to wait that long to get there. The Valiant was the first to leave to get toward the ship, but that was not how the immediate response was going to get there.

As soon as preparations were made Jack got into his SUV and drove with blue lights from Cardiff to London. He had a clearway on the M4 right the way along and by drawing on the power of Torchwood he had police clearance as all the electronic boards along the route flashed to make sure the inside lane was cleared for him to pass at top speed. There was some issues with travelling so far, but a small jet was made available. It would take them to the main airport in Alaska, then a light aircraft would take them to a small airfield as far North as they could get where they would be met by a UNIT helicopter that would fly them out to the ship. They would then get onto the vessel, either by landing the helicopter on the deck, or abseiling down into an inflatable and making it to the ship that way. Until they got close they would not be able to gauge which it was. Donna was worried and scared but she was not going to let her fears stop her from taking part in this rescue. If they could all abseil then she could as well.

They were estimating that it was going to take them a total of 14 hours to get to the ship. That included all the transfers, but it was a long time. They couldn't get there any quicker. The TARDIS was not a viable form of transport without the Doctor and Jack's teleport was out of the question as it did not work. They had to get there using their own steam and it was going to be a long and a difficult journey. They had not yet got any confirmation that the Doctor was still on the vessel either. All they knew was that it was where the teleport had originated from so it was where he had been taken. Fourteen hours was a long time for things to change, so UNIT and Torchwood teams were performing constant surveillance to make sure that if there were any changes that they would know about it as soon as possible.

When they were all on the jet that would see them over to Alaska as quickly as they could get there Donna was introduced to Jack. If it was not so urgent and she was not so worried about the Time Lord then she might have paid more attention to how handsome he was and that smooth American drawl he spoke with, but she didn't. She was terrified for her friend. Every minute that they were away from him. Every moment it took them to get to him and to affect his rescue was another moment that they could be doing despicable things to him. What if he was dead?

During the flight the UNIT soldiers that were accompanying them slept. Martha also managed to get some sleep, but Donna didn't know how she could. Even when Jack suggested that it was eight hours until they landed and that she should sleep she couldn't. What about the Doctor? Was he going to be able to sleep? Had he even woken up from being hit on the head? How could she rest unless she knew that he was safe? She should never have taken him to the shops. She should have known he'd have gotten restless and got into trouble, and what kind of trouble was this? He'd been taken? She was terrified for him. She could see the same fears in Jack as he stared out the window down at the ocean that they were crossing.

It was taking too long. The flight to Alaska was too long and when they got there it had to circle three times before it was cleared to land due to the coming in of planned commercial flights. The UNIT pilot could do nothing since their landing was unscheduled and had to be fit in without it causing major disruption. Thank fully the airport was not one of the busiest or they may have been circling for hours before being made to take an emergency route due to lack of fuel.

They landed safely. They then had the rigmarole of having to book in with UNIT again as they were from the UK branch and not from the states. They had their ID's checked. Jack and Donna were held to one side and they had special confirmation from UNIT authorities in the UK confirmed. They were then escorted across the airfield to a light aircraft. The jet that they had crossed the Atlantic in would not be able to land on the small airstrip they were going to. They all got into the small aircraft and that took off. It flew at a much slower speed and it was frustrating. Didn't they know that their friend was being held and that he was in danger?

As they flew there was an update given from UNIT. They had spotted movement on the base of the ship, but it was just one individual. The data was sent through to Martha's phone and she showed Donna a picture and she confirmed it looked like one of the people who had kidnapped the Doctor. Jack had a look and he wasn't sure of the species. He didn't think it was someone he had come across before, but that certainly didn't mean that the Doctor hadn't. The update confirmed there had been no movement on and off the ship and that it appeared to be anchored rather than making passage anywhere. The downside of the update was to suggest that there was weather moving into the area that might prevent the helicopter from getting close enough to the vessel to land. If that was the case then they would have to travel further by sea than by air and in the rough seas it would be hard, or, they would have to wait for the storm to pass in order to get on the ship. They would do everything they could do in order to ensure that they didn't have to wait.

Two hours in the light aircraft was worse than nine hours on the jet. One of the UNIT soldiers definitely felt it worse as he started to get air sick as the light aircraft was buffeted by the rising winds in the area. Several times the plane dropped enough for it to turn their stomachs over and on one occasion Donna had gripped onto what she had thought was going to be the arm of her seat only to find she was gripping hold of the Captain's hand as he had already taken his grip on the arm of the seat between them. He didn't fly too well either. He wasn't going to be sick, he just wanted to be down on the ground. When the light air craft came in to land it was on a short grassy runway that was covered in a thick blanket of snow. The plane skidded and bounced and came to a halt just before a shed that had a makeshift sign on it suggesting that it was check-in. The pilot of the light plane wanted to get off again as quickly as possible to return to the main area before the storm hit so he unloaded their equipment, refuelled and left.

Snow started to fall and the wind was whipping through the pine trees that lined the edge of the runway. The cloud was thick and low and the wind whistled. They all headed into the shed. There was UNIT issue warm weather clothing waiting for them and they happily put that on, but the helicopter pilot and co-pilot were studying satellite images of the storm that was growing outside them. They looked apologetic as they announced that they were not going to be able to fly until the storm had passed. It looked like it was going to be short lived. Only a couple of hours or so, but they did not have the visibility to make the flight and the sheer cross winds were going to make take off too dangerous for a helicopter.

Donna was about to argue about it until she saw the light aircraft taking off. It banked and rocked and barely made it into the air at all. They couldn't get to the coast and even if they could they couldn't get all the way over to the ship in a dinghy. They had no choice. They had to sit out the storm, while their imaginations ran wild, not only about what was happening to the Doctor eighty miles out to sea, but what else but the wind was howling around the cabin they were all crowded into. Jack did nothing to calm their nerves as he suggested that there would be brown bears and maybe grizzly bears and possibly polar bears and that there might be wolves and… Martha had tossed a seal skin cushion at him with a comment that unless he wanted to join them that he should be quiet.

The storm raged on. They ate rations heated over a fire and drank rank UNIT tea as they listened to the wind. They watched it on the satellite images until the storm knocked out their access. They didn't need the laptop to know that they were in the middle of it when the hut was being buffeted and they could hear the wind in the trees and the snow fell so heavily that all they could see out the window was white, the trees and the mountains behind them were invisible. At least the fire and their clothing was warm. They could not relax though. Their thoughts remained the same. With every minute they were delayed. Every moment they were not mounting a rescue. Every second that passed that they didn't receive a garbled message from a disgruntled Time Lord that no one had bothered to rescue him and he'd had to get out himself and did they know how cold it was to swim in the Arctic Sea? They knew he'd not try that. Even the Doctor wasn't that idiotic was he? He was out at sea on that ship and even if he could get away from his captors what was he going to do? Where was he going to go? He was trapped out there and he needed them and they were snowed in!


	5. Chapter 5

It was true that the weather in the mountains up there was changeable. It seemed to be surreal as the storm had raged on and then suddenly it had stopped. The sky above them was no longer heavy with clouds but became a brilliant blue. The air was cool and the snow that had fallen made it difficult to push the hut door open. They had to dig a path over to the helicopter and then clear the snow off the skis. Four hours of storm had delayed them. They were well into the evening and the light would be failing them very soon. The helicopter needed to get them to the ship and then back to land during the daylight. They had to go.

The storm must have been affecting the satellite communication links because the small group ready to intervene and attempt to rescue the Doctor had no way of gaining an update from UNIT or from Torchwood. They were on their own. They had the coordinates of the last known position of the ship where they hoped the Doctor was being held and the helicopter pilot took them there.

The flight out over the ocean in the chopper was just over half an hour. They located the ship. Jack got them to fly low over the ship so they could view the deck and see if there was anyone out there going to cause them resistance. There was no identifying marks on the vessel visible and there was no one out there. They looked right into the bridge of the ship and there was no one their either. Thick chains hung off the bow of the ship indicating that it was anchored, but there didn't appear to be any crew? At least that made boarding the vessel easy.

The sea was quite rough and the ship was rocking back and forth on the waves so it was too dangerous for the helicopter to actually touch down on the deck. It hovered twenty feet above it. The UNIT soldiers were the first ones out. They abseiled down onto the deck comfortably and then they took defensive positions holding their weapons primed and ready to engage if they came under fire. Jack was the next one to abseil down. He did it easily, and then waited at the bottom of the rope to assist Donna as he knew she had not done it before. She shrieked as she rode the rope down a bit too quickly, but Jack caught her and it was only about ten feet as the ship rose on a wave as if to lessen the distance. Martha came down last. She unclipped herself from the rope and the helicopter hovered for a few minutes before setting back off to land. They would call it back when they had investigated the ship and determined whether the Doctor was there or not.

Jack used his wrist computer to scan. The ship was deserted in all areas that he could scan, but there was a section under the deck at the rear of the ship where he couldn't. It was several levels down and he could not get any accurate scans of it. Considering the ship appeared to be an old cargo vessel it was unlikely that there would have been any shielding built in to it. The shielding had to be related to the aliens and it was where they were going to be heading.

Jack led the way down. He was used to leading a troop of men and the UNIT soldiers had no issue following his orders as he gave them directions to check and clear rooms on the way down. They were secured as they went, making their way down under the deck and toward the shielded area. There didn't appear to be any defences. Whatever the species was that had taken the Doctor they did not seem to be as prepared as they could be. They clearly didn't expect them to be able to track them or to be able to find them. They thought they were safe out to sea in amongst floating ice, but they weren't. They had been boarded and as of yet there was no indication that they even knew.

They met no resistance at all as they made their way deep into the belly of the ship. Jack knew not to get complacent. He had Martha and Donna at the rear of the group save for a single armed soldier who made the trip backward to maintain security behind them. Within a large empty cargo hold that could have taken a hundred full sized containers there was a metallic looking box. It was massive. It was twenty foot long and fifteen foot wide and ten foot tall. There were all kinds of different wires and tubes going in and out of it. There was what appeared to be a window in the side of it and a door. There was light coming from inside the area.

"What is that, Jack?" Martha asked him. "Have you seen anything like that before?"

"I have," Jack confirmed. "But it does not make sense."

"Why, what is it?"

"It looks like it is a field lab," Jack advised.

"A field lab?"

"They are self-contained laboratories with all kinds of different air and energy feeds. They are dropped down into the field usually from orbiting vessels in order to study and examine and carry out scientific work in hostile environments."

"What, so there is like a lab in there?" Donna checked with Jack.

"If it is what I think it is, then yes, it is a field lab," Jack confirmed.

"And the Doctor is in there?"

"I can't scan in there," Jack reminded her. "Stay here," Jack instructed Donna and Martha. He took the UNIT soldiers forward in order to secure the field laboratory building that had been deposited in the belly of an old cargo ship anchored 75 miles off the coast of Alaska. Someone definitely didn't want anyone to find out what they were doing in there. It set Jack off thinking about the knowledge the Doctor had. Had they got the Doctor working for them under some kind of duress?

The door to the laboratory was secured with an electronic keypad. He couldn't scan inside the actual device but he could scan the lock. He expected it to have several thousand different combinations to make it hard even for his wrist computer, but it was a basic key code no more difficult to crack than a basic three digit code on a storage locker. Jack ran the scan and got the three digit number. They definitely weren't too worried about security as the key code was simply 098. He pressed the buttons and the lock sprung back. It clicked but it didn't set any alarms off. It seemed their lack of complacency had been an overkill in the face of the complacency of the people who had taken the Doctor. Did they really not think anyone would come for him? If they had him working on something he didn't want to be working on? If they had tortured him anyway? If they had hurt him? Then they were going to have him to deal with.

Jack pulled the door open slightly. He had his gun out and it was ready with the safety off. He looked in half expecting there to be someone there ready to kill him or some kind of booby trap or alarm, but there was nothing. He pulled the door open fully. There was a huge man in the first room, but he was lying on a bunk and appeared to be sleeping. Jack indicated toward him and crossed his wrists together in an understood motion. The first two UNIT soldiers ran in. They immediately had him on his knees on the floor with his hands secured behind his back and a gun against his head before he had even woken up.

Jack moved forward with the rest of the UNIT. There were two other aliens in the middle room. They were wearing lab coats. Jack was right. It was a laboratory, but his assumption had been wrong. They were not making the Doctor work for them. His stomach turned and he felt himself pale. They were working on the Doctor.

"Fucking stand away from him!" Jack yelled as anger rose within him. "I'm warning you! Put your hands in the air and stand away from him!" he pointed his gun at the tallest one and then at the shorter one, not sure which one to shoot simply for doing whatever it was they had been doing. "Secure those bastards!" Jack exclaimed and the soldiers came forward and secured them. They didn't put up any resistance. "What have you done to him?" Jack asked.

"Don't worry, he's not human, he is not one of you," one of the alien's advised.

"That man is my friend and if you have done anything to damage him, I swear it, I will kill you where you stand," Jack warned coldly. "What have you done to him?!"

"He is our subject," one of them advised. "You would not understand."

"What species are you?" Jack asked them. "Where are you from?"

"We're Bylaxian," the taller one advised.

"Bylax?" Jack puzzled. "What are you lot doing here? Why have you hurt him?"

"It is necessary."

Jack swung the butt of his gun into the face of the taller one who was being so blasé about the Doctor and what they had done to him. He then turned to the other. "I am going to ask you once. What have you done to the Doctor?"

"We have infected him with a virus."

"Why?"

"It is affecting many on Bylax and we do not have a means of a cure or a preventative. Those it does not kill it leaves barren. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and twice as many will never bear children. It has decimated almost the entire Northern Islands. We have only been able to slow the progress of the illness and to minimise the effect of the worst symptoms for a period, but it is virulent and we cannot stop it. Our medical sciences are failing us. Our immune systems simply cannot cope with the nature of the virus."

"And you brought it to Earth?!" Jack demanded.

"It only affects two hearted species. The human race is safe. Our biologies are significantly different but it is deadly to species with a binary cardiac system."

"And that is what you gave to the Doctor?" Jack checked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He is a Time Lord. It is known he has a superior immune system. We have given him a massive dose of the viral cells and we have been witness to the affect. His body is fighting the disease. I don't know how long he will be able to keep on doing so, but while he is fighting we have been able to draw off antibodies. We are closer to being able to treat this in our species than we have ever been. We may be able to develop a cure or a vaccine for our children to protect them. It really is a remarkable breakthrough and…" the shorter of the two was halted as Jack punched him as hard as he could in the face. He then indicated to the soldiers to secure him alongside the other two that had been moved out of the lab and into the cargo area of the ship again.

"Martha!" Jack yelled for her. "You better get in here."

Martha didn't like the sound of the urgency in Jack's voice as he pulled the screens to one side and revealed the Doctor. He was lying on the bed. He seemed to be unconscious. He had a tube down his throat and he had several tubes running blood and different fluids into him. Martha and Donna hurried into the room.

"Oh no?" Donna put her hand over her mouth. "What have they done to him?" Donna approached the side of the bed. "Oh Doctor?"

"Jack?" Martha was almost as horrified as Donna. "But she couldn't afford the fear. What have they done to him?" Martha checked. "Do you know?"

"They have given him a virus that is deadly to species with two hearts and they have been drawing antibodies off him as his body fights the virus in the hope that they can use what he produces to create some kind of cure for their own species. They have two hearts."

"Do we know what the virus does?" Martha asked as she approached the Doctor. He had some monitors already attached to him and she could see that he was definitely experiencing the effect of the virus but she didn't know what they were putting into him or taking out of him. She got her kit and pulled out her stethoscope. She listened to his hearts and they matched the too fast rhythm that was showing on the monitor. The machine wasn't malfunctioning or reading the double heart rate wrong, it truly was that fast. She caressed his head. His hair was soaked with sweat and when she felt him he felt warm to the touch. Considering his body temperature was much cooler than a humans for him to feel warm to Martha meant his fever was raging.

"What can we do?" Donna asked Martha. "Is he going to be okay?"

"He is under a lot of stress," Martha commented. "Jack, I need information from the people who have done this to him. I need to know what to expect from the virus, what it is that they are giving him, and what these things are doing?" she offered.

"I'll go and get one of them," Jack advised. He went back out. The tallest of the men had regained consciousness after being pistol whipped by Jack. He flinched as the Captain went to him. Jack dragged him up by his cuffed wrists, not caring that the action would have caused the metal to bite into the flesh of his forearms painfully. He marched him back through into the area where Martha was trying to make some kind of assessment on her very sick friend.


	6. Chapter 6

"What is your name?" Martha asked the alien scientist that Jack marched in. He had an angry looking bruise coming out on the side of his face, but Martha couldn't quite bring herself to care much about that despite being a medical doctor. She was the Doctor's medical doctor first and the man in front of her had made him deliberately sick, from what she could gather from Jack they had done that to turn him into some kind of antibody factory for their own benefit. She was not going to stand for that, but she had to gain cooperation from them or she didn't know how to treat the Doctor.

"Coljai," he advised her.

"I'm Doctor Martha Jones, I'm a medic. Are you a medic?" she checked with him.

"I am a biochemist," he explained.

"I understand that you have given the Doctor a virus. He is very sick," Martha advised him.

"His systems are being overwhelmed by the viral cells. We gave him a considerable dose of the pure virus in order to increase his immune response," Coljai explained.

"What are the symptoms of the virus?"

"In our species it manifests slightly different to what we have seen in the Doctor," Coljai advised. "There are several stages in the progression of the symptoms. They begin with what would be considered some kind of respiratory tract infection. In some there are bouts of sickness and diarrhoea through the initial periods as well. As it progresses the virus attacks the cells of the organs. The hosts go through systematic organ failures. It also has a haemorrhagic affect."

"Okay," Martha nodded. It sounded like a nasty virus to have. "What is the mortality rate amongst your species?" Martha asked him.

"The virus carries a mortality rate of 79%. All persons who are known to have contracted the virus have suffered long term affects even if they have survived. With the circulatory break down this includes the loss of limbs through necessary amputation, brain damage, and sterilisation."

"I am sorry that your species is experiencing such an illness," Martha offered with some sincerity. "But, that does not give you any right over the Doctor. What you have done here is abhorrent and if there is any way that I can I will make sure that you and your colleagues and anyone who has been involved in this process is held to account for what you have done here," Martha told him firmly.

"I understand your concern," Coljai advised. "My colleagues and I will not be held account by any kind of authority," he offered. "We will be held to account by the virus. All three of us are positive for the virus. We are in the early stages, but Nimal has been the most serious of us affected by it. We have given him a dose of the antibodies that we have drawn from the Doctor's blood and it seems to have reduced the affect of the viral cells within his body," Coljai explained.

"I will not allow you to draw any more antibodies from the Doctor," Martha told him plainly. "He is going to need them himself in order to fight the disease you have given him."

"He will not be able to survive," Coljai commented. "The amount of virus he is receiving he will not have a chance."

"Receiving?" Martha clarified what Coljai said. "You're still giving him virus cells?" she checked with him. Coljai did not answer her question. "Are you still giving him virus cells?" Martha asked him. "Are they in the drip?" she checked but he did not answer him.

"Answer her question!" Jack exclaimed and yanked on the cuffs to make Coljai hiss at the metal digging into his flesh.

"Jack," Martha warned with her tone. "I will not have you hurting him to gain his cooperation. That makes us no better than him." Martha went over to the drip that was running into the Doctor's arm through a wide canola. It was on quite a fast speed for it just to be fluid, but the Doctor was feverish and sweating. She opened up her kit. She had plain saline in there. She had three packs of it. She handed two of them to one of the soldiers in the room. "Go and put this out on deck in the snow. I want to cool it down. Hopefully it will start to bring his temperature down a bit." Martha instructed. She took the drip bag that was running into the Doctor down. She flushed the canola through and then put her own saline bag up for him. At least she knew he was now getting fluid and it was not going to be containing more virus to continually over whelm him and not give him a chance to fight the infection he had.

"So, Nimal? You say he is the one with the most severe symptoms?" Martha asked Coljai. He nodded. "If he is suffering then we won't want him to get dehydrated himself." She held the half bag of fluid that she had disconnected from the Doctor. "I will go and assist him. I should have a needle canola in my kit here," Martha told him. She got the correct equipment out. She turned to another of the soldiers. "Can you bring Nimal in here please?"

"Do not do that," Coljai commented quietly.

"Why not, Coljai?" Martha asked him.

"The drip bag contains the viral cells," he admitted.

"Take him back out of here, Jack," Martha instructed. "Please don't kill them," she added. "I may need to ask more questions."

"Is there anything that I can do, Martha?" Donna asked worried for the Doctor. It didn't seem like Martha had done anything for him yet.

"I am going to need some help now. We need to get his clothing off him. He is far too hot. We need to cool him down," Martha instructed. The Bylaxians had hacked at his clothing to gain access to the points they needed. They had tubes going into him at various places and Martha wanted to be able to view him properly. The priority was going to be to get his temperature down. At least he now wasn't getting any more viral cells into him. She had to get him safe for transport in time for the arrival of the Valiant. The delay in the storms meant the airship was less than 8 hours away from them now. Looking at the stress that the Doctor was under she hoped he lasted that long.

Martha had a generic anti-viral medication in her emergency kit and she had her emergency kit with her. It was a generic drug, but in humans she knew that it had significant side effects. It wasn't a very nice medication to be given, but she had it on her largely for dealing with potential contamination through spilled infected blood or for needle-stick injuries in her colleagues, or, God forbid in herself if dealing with someone she knew had a serious viral infection. The side effects were so severe in humans that it was often worse than the actual virus, but it was a good drug. She didn't know if she could risk giving the Doctor a dose of it. He could react to medications in a far different way to a human and some of the most basic human medicines were deadly to him. She needed more information about whether he could take it before she could give it to him, but they had no contact with anyone who might be able to tell them.

"Doctor?" Martha caressed his head. "Can you hear me?" she asked him but she got no direct response from him. "It's Martha, it is okay, and we've got you now. We're going to get you out of here and sort you out, okay?" she told him. "You have got a really high temperature, so we need to try to bring that down for you. You just keep on fighting. We're not going to let anyone else hurt you."

"If I was you I'd wake up, Spaceman, Martha is about to cut your suit up," Donna warned him, but she got no response from him either. She helped Martha to remove his clothing. They cut it all off and then left him lying in just his shorts and on the remnants of his clothing. They could see there was bruising on several parts of his body where he had been manhandled roughly. Martha ran her hands over his head and found the injury where he had been coshed. He'd received a fairly significant blow to cause the swelling that he had. There was no gash or bleeding. She checked his pupil response and it was present. If he did have a concussion then it wasn't going to be too serious and compared to the effect of the virus that was ravaging his body she didn't think it was going to be significant.

His heart rates were far too high still. His breathing rate was low and shallow and snatched. All of it told him that he was under immense medical strain. She didn't know what it was that they had been giving him or what they were doing to him. She had plain saline up for him now, but she added a glucose solution to help provide him energy and to support him in the fight. She then put an oxygen mask on him with a portable cylinder. She did not have much of it. Not enough to last until the Valiant arrived so she decided to give him oxygen therapy in short bursts in case his breathing deteriorated. She adjusted the bed so that he was raised slightly at the head end. If he was going to have respiratory difficulties she did not want him to get more congested than he needed to.

"Jack?" Martha called to him. "Can you send a couple of the guys to go and get some ice or snow from on deck? I want to pack it around him to try to bring his temperature down."

There was a tube running into his left forearm. It was not attached to anything but it was capped off. He didn't need it to be in there and it was a potential infection risk. While she waited for the snow to cool him down she decided to remove it. It was taped to his flesh and she peeled that back expecting to find some kind of canola there. Instead it looked like the actual tubing was snaking into his body. Martha felt around the entrance wound and she could feel the tubing under his skin. It went into the crook of his elbow but it seemed to go up into his arm and towards his armpit. She raised his arm slightly and she could see a lot of bruising there and swelling.

She didn't know where his lymph nodes were, but as she felt into his armpit she expected that he did have glands there. They were very swollen. She checked his groin and again he had very swollen glands down there too. He didn't have them in his throat or she would have seen it straight away. She found the end of the tubing up towards his swollen gland and Martha realised they had been using it as some kind of a siting tube. There were long needle like tubes on a tray that would have been passed up the tube directly into the lymph gland under his arm. They hadn't done it cleanly based on all of the bruising, but they had been drawing antibodies and white blood cells straight from the glands where they were being made? They had literally been harvesting them from him?

"I am so sorry, Doctor," Martha whispered. "Let's get this tube out." She couldn't see that it was stitched in anywhere. They had not even secured it. She gripped it and slowly eased it out of him. The wound where it came out bled and she had to apply pressure to stop it and then stick a dressing down to it. She went to check his other arm. There was no tube in there, but it looked like they had attempted to put one in. There was a lot of bruising. When she went to raise his arm a low moan escaped the Doctor. "Shhhh, you're okay," Martha assured him even if she knew the statement couldn't be further from the truth. He really wasn't okay at all. "Can you hear me?" she got nothing from him in terms of a direct response. She wasn't happy that he had been in pain from her moving his arm though.

"I think that is the shoulder they hit," Donna commented as she stood beside the Doctor gently stroking his sweaty forearm.

Martha went to examine his shoulder but before she had a change his breathing changed suddenly and he tensed on the bed. A wail erupted from him moments before he started to convulse. His body twisted and jerked on the bed.

"Martha, what's happening?" Donna asked.

"He's too hot," Martha exclaimed. "Jack! I need that ice!"


	7. Chapter 7

Jack hurried in with two soldiers. They had managed to find a container on the ship's deck, but there wasn't a great deal of ice or snow out there despite them being in the ocean North of Alaska. It had not got dark despite it having to be late even in local time. He went in with what little snow and ice they had found and was greeted by a horrific site. Donna was wringing her hands with tears flowing down her face as Martha was trying to support the Doctor by restricting the amount his head was twisting and bouncing off the hard vinyl of the couch that he was laid on.

"Oh God?" Jack knew enough to know that if he was convulsing then it was serious. The risks of long term damage to his brain through the infection had escalated quite significantly. He helped Martha pack the ice around his body to try to bring his body temperature down. They put it around his arms and his shoulders and around his neck and to his groin and his hips to the points where his blood flow was close to his skin so that the coolness would hopefully spread throughout his body. The ice was melting quickly though as it was put against his skin hot with the raging fever.

"That's it Doctor," Martha paused to caress his head as the convulsion seemed to taper out. She didn't think they had got his temperature down at all yet, but he had stopped thrashing. She checked his breathing. She gave him the oxygen back again as he was snatching at the air. She got her stethoscope out and listened to his chest. He was starting to sound more congested. "How far out is the Valiant?" Martha asked Jack.

"Six or seven hours?"

"That's too long," Martha stated. She wasn't sure she meant to say that out loud but she had and it sent a renewed fear through both Jack and Donna.

"What do you need?" Jack asked her.

"He needs oxygen. More than I can give him. I think he's going to end up needing to be ventilated before this is over and I don't have the equipment to do that. I need to be able to give him as much medical assistance as I can and this isn't a medical lab. There is nothing here to make him better it was all about making him sick. He's really… damn," Martha paused as the Doctor tensed again. "He's still far too hot."

The second convulsion didn't last as long as the first, but that just gave the impression that the Doctor was weakening further. "We need to cool him down or there is no way he is going to last until the Valiant gets here."

"Can we move him?" Jack checked.

"Not far, he's really unwell here, Jack," Martha warned him. She didn't want any of them to think that at this point saving his life and getting him well again was the most likely outcome of this.

"It is cold up on deck," Jack told them. "We're in the middle of the Artic."

"Okay," Martha nodded. She unhooked the drip so that they could move him. The bed that he was on was not designed to be moved anywhere, but Jack didn't plan to carry him on a stretcher. He wrapped his arms around him and gentle eased him up. He was so hot Jack could feel the heat from his sweat soaked skin radiating from him. "Watch his head," Martha warned as the Time Lord's head rocked backward as Jack lifted him. The Captain adjusted his grip on him to make sure that he was well supported. He was a little heavier than he expected but he was far too limp. He hung from Jack's arms.

As they passed through the area where the three aliens who had done this were being held under armed guard Martha paused. "Carry on up," Martha told Jack and Donna. Donna led the way making sure there was nothing that was going to hinder Jack or trip him up while he had such a precious cargo. She could not believe she had taken him shopping and then sent him for cake and he had ended up like this. She was not a medic and she was not a scientist but even Donna could see that he was in a bad way. She could read people and she could see that Martha was barely holding it together and that she was terrified for him.

"Is he deceased?" Coljai asked Martha plainly. "If he is deceased then we need the antibodies from his blood stream before he is disposed of."

"Disposed of?" Martha shook her head slightly. "That man is my friend. He is not being disposed of and he is not deceased. He is fighting it. We are taking him up to the surface into the air to attempt to bring his temperature down."

"The higher his temperature the more significant his immune response."

"I am not interested in using him as a factory for antibodies," Martha told Coljai firmly. "I am interested in limiting the damage done to him by this virus."

"You are only wasting your time and prolonging his suffering. No man can survive the amount of infection that he has been given," Coljai advised Martha.

"I am not going to give up on him," Martha stated plainly. "You may be right. I am not going to hide that I am very worried about him and that he is very sick, but I am not going to leave him to die without trying. I need you to answer some questions."

"What if we don't?" Another of them asked.

"Then I will make sure that if he does die that he is immediately cremated and that any antibodies in his system are destroyed and that nothing is gained by his death," Martha advised them.

"Ask your questions," Coljai offered. He seemed to be more pragmatic about it and to have at least some concern for the Time Lord even if that concern had not led him to prevent the horrific act of introducing and infection to study the response.

"I understand that he was struck prior to you taking him. Has he regained consciousness from the head injury that you inflicted and then lost consciousness again because of illness or has he been unconscious throughout?" Martha asked needing to gain some additional information. She was assuming that he was only convulsing because of his fever but he had been knocked out by a violent blow to his head.

"He did regain consciousness," Coljai offered.

"And did he display any symptoms of head injury when he did?"

"He complained of head pain but there were no obvious signs of head injury, though I am not entirely sure of the symptoms and signs that would be displayed in his species."

"And yet you are willing to give him a deadly virus?" Martha asked and shook her head slightly. "You know what the saddest thing about all of this is?" Martha checked with them. Coljai looked to her. "That man who is clinging to the edge of life at this moment is probably one of the most accomplished scientists that you could come across. I have seen him do incredible things. If you had asked him for help he would have given it and instead the chances are that you have killed him and you will gain nothing."

Martha left them to dwell on that. At least she now knew that he had regained consciousness between being hit and becoming ill. He had declined very quickly with the virus in that case. It was less than 24 hours since he was taken and he was desperately ill. She went up onto the deck.

Jack had moved into an area where they were sheltered from the harsh ocean winds that were whipping across the open deck of the ship and where they were away from the risk of any of the waves crashing over the side of the ship. Within the lab the ground hadn't seemed to be affected by the waves, but up on the deck they could feel the movement of the ship. It was rolling and rocking over the significant waves on the ocean. It wasn't still stormy but it certainly wasn't calm either.

Donna was holding the drip up so that it continued to run into the Doctor's arm while Jack was sitting on the deck. As much as they needed to cool the Doctor down he didn't want him lying on the harsh metal of the ship. He was not protected and he could have ended up quickly getting frost bite if his skin was against the heat drawing metal. He had taken his warm weather jacket off and had laid it out so that the Doctor was sitting in his lap and was resting against him. Jack had sat him up a bit more as when he'd laid him flat his breathing had start to rattle in the back of his throat.

Salt spray blew in off the ocean and froze in the air so that it was like being peppered by little shards of glass. It was freezing up there. Jack's wrist computer indicated that the air temperature was – 8 degrees Celsius. Martha came up into the open fastening her own massive fur lined UNIT issued parker so that she was protected. She wanted to cool the Doctor down but she didn't want the rest of them to end up with hypothermia. As she knelt down and removed her glove to check the Doctor's temperature she could feel that it was working.

"Did you get any information from Coljai?" Jack asked Martha.

"He confirmed that he had regained consciousness between being hit on the head and being infected," Martha commented. "That is good in the sense that it means that he is less likely to be carrying a very serious head injury. It is worrying in the speed and the virulence of the virus and how quickly it has made him this ill. He is not being pumped full of the viral cells now which means that he is going to have a chance to try and fight it, but he has already been convulsing. We have no way of knowing how much damage has already been done. There is a medical bay on the Valiant. We need him there as quickly as we can."

"His breathing isn't so good." Jack advised and nodded understanding how serious things were.

"I think we have some extra leeway with him because of his bypass," Martha suggested. "But he is very sick indeed. I don't have the facilities here to find out how sick he actually is."

"How are we going to get up onto the Valiant?" Donna asked.

"A helicopter," Martha advised. "They will send a helicopter down to get us and transfer us up there."

"Is there no way we can go and meet it?" Donna asked. "I am not sure how it works, but what about the helicopter that brought us here. Can't we use that to go and meet the Valiant?"

Jack glanced at Donna and then at Martha. "If they can get fuel out to that chopper then it could take a couple of hours off the wait," he offered.

"Then we need to do it," Martha advised. She had her stethoscope out and listened to the Doctor's chest. She listened to his hearts and to his breathing and then she felt for a pulse in his wrist. The pulse in his wrist was significantly weaker than it should be. "Come on, Doctor," Martha breathed as she caressed his head. She put the back of her hand to his cheek and then to his chest. He still felt warm to her which meant his fever remained significant. He should have felt cool.

It was ten more minutes before the Doctor started to shiver. His skin was still marked with a fine glimmer to sweat but he was shivering against Jack. Jack wrapped his arms around him, holding his hands so that they didn't get too cold as they had to bring his core temperature down further. Sitting outside on the deck of the ship was not the ideal place for him to be as there was no control on how cool it was and how quickly he lost the body heat of fever. Martha knew he was resilient to the cold when he was fit. He'd been practically frozen on the Pentallion but he came through that. Martha could only hope that strength carried him through this as well.


	8. Chapter 8

"We need to get him back inside now," Martha advised. He was still feverish, but he was shivering violently with the effect of being out in the cold Arctic air and they had to be cautious about not putting him into more biological shock by trying to cool him down too much too quickly. Martha supported the Doctor's head for a moment as Jack got out from under him and then eased him up into his arms. As he lifted him up he thought for a horrible moment that he had stopped breathing altogether but then he wheezed a harsh gasp. Jack silently prayed to anyone or anything that was listening, promising to do anything that was asked of him, if they let the Doctor get through this.

They carried him back through the cargo ship to the closest thing they had to a bed. They all wanted to keep him as far away as possible from the lab where they had done this to him, but they also needed somewhere that he could lie comfortably. As Jack eased him back down onto the vinyl topped bench the Doctor moaned softly.

"Doctor?" Martha came immediately to his bedside. "It's Martha, can you hear me, Doctor?" she asked him. She caressed the side of his face. He didn't feel overly warm now but she knew that the infection was still raging within him and they had to make sure that his fever didn't get as dangerously high again. At least she had a reasonable gauge of how hot he could get without it having the serious consequences of convulsion. She expected they were going to be cooling him down more times before this was over for him.

The Doctor moaned and tension rippled through his body. It wasn't the start of a convulsion it was a clear indication of pain and discomfort. Martha caressed his head and Donna came in and took hold of one of his hands. His fingers were limp in hers for a moment, but then they curled around Donna's hand in a loose reflex until he moaned when his grip became tight. Donna clamped her other hand on top of his to try and support him. He arched and keened on the bed and his breathing became more strained.

"Jack, can you help me ease him up a little?" Martha asked worried that his breathing was going to cause them issues. They could hear the effect of the infection rattling in his chest and she didn't want to be dealing with pneumonia if they had any chance of avoiding it.

The Doctor whimpered as Jack brought him up a little. They had nothing left to support him with. The back of the couch didn't come up to a therapeutic level and they didn't have any cushions. Donna took her warm weather coat off and rolled it up and they tried to use that, but it wasn't ideal. When they laid him back down against it he twisted slightly as it wasn't even and they had to hold him. He tensed as a rough cough contorted him. Martha got the oxygen again and placed the mask over his nose and mouth, his lips were beginning to show the tell-blue tint of cyanosis. She looked to Jack. "How quickly can we get to the Valiant?"

Jack caressed the Doctor's head and then went to left the lab area to go back up on the deck to get a better signal on the satellite communication aspect of his wrist computer. He had to pass through the area where the three aliens were being held custody. "Is he dead yet?" the smaller one sneered at Jack as he walked through. Jack didn't grant that comment with a verbal response, he simply strode up the alien who had said it and punched him hard enough in the face that the back of his head struck the metal wall of the field lab pod. He slumped forward with his hands cuffed behind his back.

"Make sure he doesn't suffocate," Jack gave the instruction to one of the soldiers guarding them and then he walked out of the pod and went up onto deck. Jack made contact with the Valiant. They had made good speed but they were still five hours away. He contacted the UNIT helicopter that had brought them in. They had been refuelled and were awaiting instruction. The helicopter wasn't fitted out to carry out an emergency evacuation but it had carried all the troops in as well as Donna, Jack, and Martha. They would have to lie the Doctor over a row of seats and they would have to fly low so that the reduced air pressure didn't further risk his breathing. It would be about a two hour flight but at least it would get him to the Valiant more quickly.

He gave the instructions to make it happen. It would be about thirty minutes until the helicopter made it to the position of the boat. It wasn't going to be able to land so they were going to have to be winched up to the helicopter deck and without the equipment for a medevac that was going to be difficult with the Doctor, but they'd get him up there and to the Valiant. Jack went back down to the field lab pod again.

"We have got the helicopter returning. We are going to winch up with the Doctor and intercept the Valiant so that he can receive the required medical treatment as soon as possible," Jack advised the soldiers who were holding the prisoners. "Depending on how his condition is best managed we will either continue on the Valiant to retrieve you and our prisoners, or, a separate vessel will be despatched to take you on board."

"Understood, Sir," the man in charge of the unit confirmed.

Jack went through to the room where the Doctor was lying. Donna had taken to wiping the sweat from his brow with a piece of cloth that she had found in one of the drawers, but there was nothing else there of use. Martha couldn't even get to work on trying to determine what the virus was and how it was attacking the Doctor's systems because she didn't understand any of the equipment around her and many of the instructions were written in a language she could not read and was not translating for some reason.

"The chopper will be here within half an hour and then it will be a two hour flight to get him to the Valiant," Jack advised Martha. "We will need to get him up to the main deck and then the only way on board is by winching. I will go up at the same time as him to make sure he is safe, but that means you and Donna are going to have to be winched up together."

"If it gets him the help he needs then we need to do it," Donna advised. "That will be better, won't it Spaceman, a nice comfortable bed and all the medicines that you need to help you feel better," she assured him. It was unclear if he was aware of anything but the virus ravaging his systems as he whimpered and wheezed and occasionally writhed in weak throes of tension. "It is all going to be alright, Spaceman. You're not going to let a silly virus get the better of you are you?"

"We will put a fresh bag of fluid up for him before we go," Martha instructed.

"It is still outside, I will go and get it," Donna offered. She knew where the bags of drip fluid were and she went out to get them. She didn't even look at the three prisoners. She wasn't sure what she would do if there were not soldiers standing there. As far as she was concerned they were not guarding them they were protecting them from her.

She returned with the drip bags. They were icy cold. Martha checked there was no actual ice crystals but the solution contained various salts that would make it freeze at a lower temperature. It was fine and she put the drip bag up. She changed it over and started by squeezing some of it in to begin with as he was beginning to feel warm again. As the cold fluid ran into his arm he moaned. She knew it couldn't have felt comfortable to have it running into his vein.

"I'm sorry, Doctor, your body temperature is too high, this will help to keep it stable," she offered explaining her actions even if she didn't think the Doctor could hear her. She didn't want to tell him that she was trying to keep him alive long enough to get him to the Valiant in the hopes that she could start looking at the damage the virus had done and how to start putting it right. She caressed his shoulder and he moaned again. She was worried about that shoulder. She'd get some scans of it when she got on the Valiant. It wasn't obviously dislocated or anything but she could tell it was causing him pain and there was a chance that a direct blow could have caused him damage.

"Watch him for a moment," Martha went through to the area where the prisoners were again. She addressed Coljai as he seemed to be the most willing to assist. "He is still fighting," she told him. "And, we are taking him off this vessel and to our own medical facility."

"From what I understand you're taking him urgently because you don't think he is going to last long enough for your ship to get here?" the shorter meaner Bylaxian advised.

"We are going to do everything that we can to save him and to ensure that you do not benefit from what you have done here," Martha told him, but she sighed. "Coljai? I need to know as much about the virus as you can tell me? He is weakening and he is dying. He is the last of his species. What happens today if he dies because of this is genocide and I don't believe that is what you set out to do. Please? If there is anything you can tell us about it? How does it replicate? How long does it live inside the body and outside of it? What does it need and how does it do the damage that it does?" Martha asked him. "The man you have done this to is my friend, Coljai, and he is a good man."

"I am sorry to tell you that you are wasting your time," Coljai advised her. He sounded like he was genuinely sorry for what had been done.

"You elected the Time Lord because he is stronger and has a stronger immune response to the virus than your species does. Maybe with the right treatment we might be able to support him so that immune response gets him through the sickness? Please, anything that you can tell me that will assist in that then we need to know. What is the virus even called?"

"Anyest R-16," Coljai advised. He looked at Martha and then he looked at his two companions, one of whom remained impassive and the other who was just plain angry. He regretted what they had done. He had been driven by the desperation of infection, not his own infection with the virus but with the infection of his family. "The virus has been well described by our own scientists and biochemists. There are some palliatives that can reduce the symptoms and allow the subject a longer life but they ultimately succumb. I am sorry, but we introduced an overwhelming amount of the virus into your friend's systems. The chance of slowing the effects of the virus do not exist for him. He was almost immediately symptomatic. All of the information that we have on the virus is included on a reference disk. There is a copy of it in the room where your friend is."

"Where?" Martha asked. "Come and show me?" she nodded to one of the soldiers. They indicated for Coljai to get up and follow Martha into the room. He remained at gun point and was not going to run, but he showed Martha where the disk was.

Coljai paused and looked to the Doctor. He was writhing and sweating and whimpering between noisy harsh wheezes. "What are you looking at?!" Donna exclaimed. "Get out of here! Don't you look at him! You've done enough!"

"I am sorry." Coljai bowed his head. "His symptoms are too severe. He is not going to survive much longer."

"He is stronger than you think," Donna exclaimed. "He's not going to die because of what you have done to him. You don't know him. He's not going to die," Donna shouted. "Tell him, Martha!" Donna insisted but Martha couldn't say that. She looked away from Donna and down to the floor. "I don't care what either of you think," Donna stated firmly. "He is not going to die."


	9. Chapter 9

Jack had gone out of the room where the Doctor was and he returned with four harnesses. They were the ones used to abseil down onto the ship to rescue the Time Lord. Now they were going to have to put them back on and get up on deck for the arrival of the helicopter so they could get him to the Valiant as soon as possible.

"We need to get one of these onto him," Jack offered as he held up the harness which consisted of looped straps and buckles. Jack and Martha worked to get it on him. They had to make sure it was tight. He was unconscious and he would not be able to hold on himself. Jack was going to go up first on the winch with the Time Lord and he had already decided he was going to clip the Time Lord onto himself as well as onto the rope in the hopes to keep him as steady as possible. The last thing they wanted was for him to be swinging around on the end of a rope for long.

As they rolled the Doctor onto his side in order to get the waist straps as high up his body as they could the Time Lord moaned. "I'm sorry, Doctor, it won't be long," Martha assured him. She rubbed his back as he was on his side, and took the opportunity to listen to the rattle and wheeze of his increasingly congested chest. They really needed to get him on some medications to help him fight the effects of the virus.

When they laid him flat he seemed to convulse for a moment, and then his breathing became much worse. He was gagging and choking. "Get him on his side again!" Martha barked the instruction. She got him on his side and tipped his head back, turning his neck gently so that the small amount of vomit that had risen into his throat was able to drain down out. She looked to Jack.

The Captain paced the room as he accessed his wrist computer and contacted the UNIT pilots bringing the helicopter in. They were ten minutes away and they couldn't get there any faster than they were already coming. It didn't matter if Jack shouted at them to hurry up or not.

Martha spent a few minutes cleaning the Doctor up. The thick gelatinous orangey vomit that had risen to choke him was a worrying sign. Even unconscious many patients would wake suddenly in order to vomit safely, but he'd not done. It had risen into the back of his throat ready to drown or choke him. She needed to keep him on his side now in case it happened again and that was going to be more difficult in the helicopter.

His skin was warm to the touch again and his features were so pale except for the burning red flush to his cheeks. There were swellings coming up under both of his arms and in his groin. Martha had to make sure that the straps from the harness did not interfere with them. The danger of the swollen glands being compressed was hard. She noted with concern that there was the first signs of mottling coming into his hands and down his lower legs. His hearts were beating rapidly but his circulation was not effective enough. She touched the top of his feet with the back of her hands. Despite his fever they felt cool to the touch. She got his boot socks back out of the Converse he had been wearing and pulled them onto his feet again. It wasn't going to do much to assist him. He needed to have fleece boots and something to help boost his circulation. He needed more oxygen than they could give him. There was hardly any left in the canister at all now.

Jack made sure that Donna and Martha had their harnesses on correctly. Martha had undergone the UNIT training so she was going to be able to make sure that she and Donna were attached to the helicopter winch okay, but one of the soldiers was coming out with them as well. That was going to leave five UNIT soldiers on the vessel to maintain the security of their prisoners. The sixth would ensure they got onto the helicopter safely and then would return to assist his colleagues until they were all picked up. He understood the urgency of getting the Doctor off the cargo ship and onto the Valiant. He didn't think he had ever seen anyone as sick as the Doctor was.

There was a lab coat hanging on the back of the door in the field lab pod. Martha grabbed that and wrapped it around the Doctor's shoulders. They didn't want to dress him again. He was too hot, but they were going back up onto deck. Jack eased his arms around the Time Lord and he got Martha to help support his head as he lifted him up off the bench. The Doctor moaned and then cried out more significantly as Jack tilted him so that he was leaning into him to make it easier to carry his limp form.

"I'm sorry," Jack whispered. He carried the Doctor, wrapped in the lab coat, out onto deck. Looking out over the side of the boat and to the south they could see the light of the helicopter approaching. The sea was quite rough and again the boat was rolling across the waves in a manner it didn't do when inside the field pod. It had to have some kind of internal stabilisation or inertial dampener system to prevent the motion from affecting those inside it. Donna was quite glad as she thought that if she had to spend any amount of time being rocked back and forth that way that she would end up being sick herself. The deck of the ship tilted so far to the side that they had to work their way along the barrier and they could see that the clouds were whipping overhead rapidly. When a wave crashed so far up the side of the ship that it spilled onto the deck they knew how difficult it was going to be for the helicopter to maintain a safe position for them to winch up. They were going to have to get up quickly.

Within a few minutes the helicopter was overhead. They co-pilot left the front and became the winch operator and he sent the rope down for the first time. The boat was rising and falling ten to fifteen feet at a time on the swell and the cold air and brittle sting of the freezing spray made it hard to see. The UNIT soldier managed to get forward and grab the rope. He brought it over to where Jack was trying to shelter the Doctor in his arms from the worst of the weather. He watched as the soldier clipped the Doctor's harness to the rope and then also to a spare D ring on Jack's harness. He then made sure that the clip on his own harness was secured on the rope below that of the Doctor's so he would be beneath him. He was planning on trying to hold himself so he could support the Doctor and stop him from simply dangling on the rope.

"Ready?!" the soldier yelled. Jack gave him the thumbs up. The soldier moved away and gave the signal to the winch operator above. The slack was taken up first but then the boat rose up on a wave making more slack which was taken up by the winch. The deck of the boat seemed to fall away from Jack's feet as it tipped back off the crest of a wave and he was in the air beneath the helicopter. He held onto the Doctor and the rope the best that he could, but the Time Lord's head rocked backward as he splayed out limply.

When they got to the bottom of the helicopter the landing ski came to Jack's shoulder first. He made sure that he didn't swing the Doctor into it as the winch operator brought them up. Jack managed to get hold of the floor of the helicopter and a handhold there as the winch operator grabbed the front of the harness holding the Doctor and hauled him onto the deck. Jack came up as well so that they were both lying on the ground. He unclipped himself from the Doctor and then from the rope.

The winch operator was already sending the rope back down for Donna and Martha. Jack could feel the helicopter being buffeted and tossed around by the wind and he knew the pilot was doing a sterling job in trying to keep it steady enough for the rescue. They were at their very limits of flying tolerance trying to hold a position in 40 mile an hour winds that were gusting to 60 and 70 miles and hour.

The UNIT soldier got hold of the rope again. Donna and Martha were hooked onto it. They needed to get going and get back into motion. As soon as they were off the deck the helicopter started to move away, but the boat rolled and came up. The deck slammed back into them as they had not lifted far enough away to get up. They were dragged along the deck for a few feet before it dropped down again. The winch operator was giving the instruction for the helicopter to gain altitude so they cleared the railing around the bow of the ship as it came back again. It was close but they missed it.

Donna had her eyes screwed tightly shut as the boat disappeared from beneath them and they were dangling over the ocean. She was holding onto Martha and Martha was holding onto her. They twisted and swung on the rope as it was winched up while the helicopter was in flight. The winch operator leant down through the door and dragged them both into the base of the helicopter and slid the door closed before they tackled the ropes.

Martha was checking the Doctor out as Jack was holding him on his side on the floor of the helicopter. His breathing was very bad. He needed to be sitting up and they couldn't afford to go too high. The co-pilot went back up front and he returned with a small oxygen cylinder. It wouldn't last the full two hour trip but it was there for emergencies and he could see that the Doctor's health was an emergency.

"Are you two okay?" the co-pilot checked when he went to get the ropes off them and finish getting the winch secured.

"I think so," Donna confirmed. "That wasn't much fun," she offered, but she went to the Doctor and took his hand. His fingers were limp and they didn't close around hers this time. She could see that there was a dark pink and white marbling pattern on the back of his hand and that the lines at the base of his fingertips were looking a bit bluish. That wasn't right at all.

"Doctor Jones? Are you okay?" the co-pilot checked with her. He had seem them both slam back into the deck and was sure that they'd be in trouble. It had not been a text book rescue but in any other circumstances they would not have risked venturing out to rescue in that type of helicopter. She didn't answer but had got her stethoscope out and was listening to the Doctor's breathing.

"We need to get him sitting up a bit more, Jack," Martha instructed him. Instead of getting him up onto the chairs they left him on the floor. Jack leant back against the wall and then they eased the Doctor so he was sitting between his legs on the floor and was leaning back so that his head was against Jack's upper abdomen. She took the seat cushions off the nearest seat and she slid them under his knees to bend them up and reduce the effort it was putting on his hearts to pump blood around his body. He was shaking and sweating and even with the oxygen that had been given he was struggling to get enough to keep his lips pale and pink. They loosened the harness off from around his middle where it had been pulled tight for the trip up to the helicopter and they saw that he had dark purple red bruises coming out in a line over his hip where the harness had dug in.

"How far out are we from the Valiant?" Martha asked the pilot.

"We should be docking within an hour and a half," he advised her. "We are going as quickly as we can, but we're fighting quite a strong head wind."

"Which means the Valiant has a tail wind," Jack commented. "That may be the best way round. Hear that, Doctor? It's not going to be long now," he assured him. He rubbed his chest lightly and his arms. Trying to make sure that the blood kept flowing.

They had been flying for almost an hour when the Doctor started to convulse again. There was nothing they could do inside the helicopter except try to stop him from injuring himself or one of them. The convulsion lasted for almost five minutes. When he finally slumped back down into Jack's lap he was too still.

"Come on, Doctor, you need to breathe," Martha insisted as she got Jack to ease away from him to lie him back down flat. She tipped his head backward to make sure that his airway was clear and the Doctor tensed and spluttered reflexively as more of the orange mucus type vomit rose into his mouth. They got him over onto his side and held him so it could drain into a sticky smear on the helicopter floor. "Please, Doctor, come on?" She rubbed his back and held him with his head back. His whole body contorted again and she had to use tissue to clear out the back of his throat. Thankfully after a few agonising seconds he wheezed a shaky breath.

"How long?" Martha asked quietly looking to Jack.

"It's going to be about forty minutes," Jack advised her.

"I don't know if he's going to last that long," Martha voiced her fears quietly to the Captain. "Why isn't he regenerating, Jack?"

"I don't know," Jack admitted. "Maybe it is something to do with the virus or maybe it is something they have done to him? If he does start? If there is any indication that he is going to, then we need to get this chopper down, even if it means us all jumping out into the sea," Jack advised. He was fairly sure that is he regenerated within the confines of the helicopter that he would end up killing them all.


	10. Chapter 10

Docking the helicopter with the Valiant was a feat in itself, but they did and somehow the Doctor was still alive; just. He was stronger than anyone could imagine as he was clinging onto life. He was cyanotic, he was not getting enough oxygen again. He was burning up and there was clear evidence that his circulation was shutting down, but he had made it to the Valiant and that was now his best chance. They had a medical team and they had the limited UNIT medical files on him. They had oxygen and fluids and medications and a proper bed and a ventilator and proper monitors that Martha knew how to use.

As soon as the helicopter was secured on the upper surface of the Valiant and the rotors had stopped and the skis had been clamped down the doors were thrown open. A medical team with a gurney rushed towards the helicopter aware that they were bringing the Doctor in and that he was incredibly unwell. Jack lifted the Time Lord up and laid him on the bed. There was no acknowledgement from him of the movement, unlike when he'd groaned in pain when he was lifted into the helicopter. Any awareness that he had was lost.

Donna jumped out of the helicopter next. Martha moved so she was sitting on the edge of the floor of the helicopter where she had spent the journey with the Doctor. She stepped down and followed. Jack was the first to notice that she was barely putting any weight onto her right leg at all as she tried to hurry after the Doctor.

"Martha?"

"Keep on going after him," Martha insisted waving off Jack's attention.

"What is it?" Jack asked her. He knew that she and Donna had slammed into the deck again when the ship had come up and he had been entirely grateful that neither of them had been hurt, but it was clear that his gratitude had been misplaced and that Martha was hurt.

"Jarred my ankle," Martha commented. "It's not worth fussing about. We need to sort him out, quickly Jack, or we are going to lose him. I am amazed he has hung on this long."

"I know," Jack accepted. He knew that Martha couldn't stop and that wasn't fair. Of the medics available at UNIT she was the one who had the best chance of saving him, but she was lagging behind. The Doctor had already got into the lift and they were now waiting for her and holding her up. "Piggy back," Jack suggested. He got in front of Martha and ducked down. She accepted that in terms of covering the ground it might be more sensible and she got up onto Jack's back. She was as light as a feather to the Captain and he jogged over. "As soon as he is stable you get that looked at," Jack told her.

"I will," Martha agreed.

They took the Doctor down into the lift into a medical bay. He was transferred onto a proper bed and there were medics ready to act and to ensure that they gave him the best chance. They knew that the person they had in front of him was the Doctor so they did not immediately jump into action. They needed the guidance that Martha could give them to ensure they did nothing to harm him.

"Right, strip him down, we need to get plain fluids up for him. I want him lying on a cooling blanket and we want fans on in here. I want his vitals taken every five minutes and recorded manually and electronically. I want blood samples in the lab straight away and I want a full test. We're going to intubate and ventilate and we'll sedate him until we have some kind of idea what we are going to do to support him while he fights this. I want a general anti-viral given and we will give him a bolus of glucose and of potassium to give him a fighting chance," Martha instructed.

It took almost an hour to get the Doctor sorted out. During that time Martha insisted that both Donna and Jack remained outside. Instead of being stuck in the corridor they were called in to a briefing room with the current commander of the Valiant, a Colonel Hartley. He wanted a full brief of what had happened and where they were at. Jack advised them of the three prisoners who were being held by six UNIT soldiers on the cargo vessel anchored North of Alaska. They didn't have any provisions they were aware of so they were going to have to be retrieved.

Colonel Hartley had direct orders to take the Valiant straight back to London as soon as the Doctor was on board. He scrambled a boat to go out and retrieve the soldiers and prisoners and then they would be transported to UNIT HQ in London as well. They were going to be handling all aspects of this incident. He assured them that they would make sure that any resources required to assist the Doctor and to bring the people to justice that had done this to him would be made available.

"How is he?" Jack asked as the door opened and Martha hobbled to the door. She looked worried and tired and like she needed the chance to have a break and get her ankle looked at.

"He is still very sick," Martha offered. "But, I think he is stable for now. It is always hard to know how he is going to react to our interventions, and we are now at a position where he could go either way. He is going to be monitored constantly. I have given him a huge dose of anti-viral medications. Now they are pretty nasty with side effects for humans and I expect they will be for him as well, but he needs them. As he is so sick and because his breathing has been difficult we have put him on a ventilator that is taking over his breathing for him. We have also medically induced a deep unconsciousness so that his body has a chance to try and fight this. He is still suffering from a high fever so we are trying to bring his body temperature down and I the science team have taken blood samples and the data on the virus that was provided by Coljai and they will look at developing some more specific treatments for him."

"Can we see him?" Donna asked.

"Yes, of course you can," Martha offered. "He's ventilated and he's got a lot of different monitoring devices attached as well as several drips running in so don't be upset by any of that. It is there to help him even if it looks pretty invasive."

"Does he look any worse than when he was convulsing?" Donna asked. Martha shook her head.

"You need to go and sort yourself out," Jack told Martha.

"We have taken some scans of his shoulder and we are waiting to see what comes back from them. Then, I am going to spend the next hour sitting with him to make sure that if he immediately turns a corner he is turning it the right way, and then, I will sort myself out," Martha assured Jack. "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. I just landed off centre when we were being winched up."

Donna went into the room with the Doctor. It was a proper room now and there were three chairs in there. He was lying in a bed but there was no sheet on it or any covers. He had electrodes positioned all over his chest and there was a monitor showing a double line. It seemed to be running very quickly. He had a blood pressure cuff around his arm and that was regularly going up and down to see what his blood pressure was doing. They were constantly taking his body temperature and he was running at 34 degrees. It was far too high for him, but they had him lying on a cool mattress and the fluids that he was receiving were on a cooling pump and there were fans blowing across him to keep him cool. There was a bowl of water at the side of the bed and there were cloths in there to regularly wipe him down to try to keep him from getting too hot again.

He had a double canola in each of his arms. They were taped and then bandaged in place in case he had another convulsion. He was receiving fluid and nutrient and medication through the bags. He had a tube down his throat and into his trachea and that was attached to a machine that was clicking and whirring regularly as his chest rose up and down.

"Oh, Doctor?" Donna sighed as she rubbed his forearm as it rested loosely on the mattress beside him. "What are we going to do now?" she asked him. Seeing him like that surrounded by medical equipment and so totally still she actually doubted for the first time that he was going to bounce back. "How long will it be until we know if he is going to be okay or not?"

"We need to know what the virus is doing to him and how it replicates. Some viruses don't replicate very well in the body and the anti-virals we have given him will stop that from happening. If the virus is not replicating and we only have to see him through the current level of infection then we will know how he is responding within the next day or so. If the virus is not going to react to the anti-virals we have given him we will have to do some more work and see what happens," Martha explained. "Unfortunately we don't know yet and there are too many variables for me to answer that for you. We do have some very good people working on it. The best in the field."

"On the valiant?" Donna asked curiously wondering why they would be up on the ship.

"No, we have the full resource of UNIT available to us even while we are up here. We are digitally linked to everyone that we need. The Doctor is important to UNIT and there will be people getting out of bed across the globe to solve this if we need them to. It is not however my area of expertise, so, I will be sitting waiting for news as much as you are," Martha admitted to Donna. "All I can do is try to minimise the effect of the symptoms on him both in terms of their acute and immediate effect on his systems and any long term issues," Martha commented. "We're doing the best we can by him by giving him the fluid, nutrient, and medications and keeping him unconscious. The less his body has to do to sustain itself the more it can fight the virus. He is strong and he does have a good immune system."

"So, he will be alright?" Donna checked.

"I'm sorry," Martha offered. "I simply don't know at this stage. He is critically ill, Donna. If we had not got him here when we did then I don't think he would have lasted more than fifteen minutes more. He's not been getting enough oxygen. Even now his circulation is not as good as it should be. We are supporting that. He will be getting massages regularly from the nursing staff to make sure that he keeps on getting blood flow to his feet and to his hands in order to prevent any risk of tissue death. He's not out of the woods yet, but we are doing all we can to support him while he continues to fight."

"What do we do now?" Donna asked.

"The Valiant is taking us back to London and to the UNIT HQ. As soon as we get there we will transfer him down to the main hospital there. It is even better equipped than the Valiant and we will have more staff and more resources available to assist him. They will likely retrieve the TARDIS too and hopefully she will have something to hand to further assist him. We just have to take this one hour at a time at the moment. Hope that we come up with something to help him and that he remains stable and ideally begins to improve."

"Wait and keep our fingers crossed," Jack concluded.

"Yeah, I know it is cliché but a lot of this is down to how much fight he has left in him. He's strong and he's fit and he's generally quite healthy. I'd like it if he was a bit heavier but he's not hugely underweight."

"Are you kidding?!" Donna exclaimed shocked by the sentiment.

"Don't be mean to him when he's so sick," Jack scolded but was amused. "He's not that skinny."

"Yes he is!"

"He's not." Martha smiled. "You can see that he's not. He's not emaciated and he has a degree of musculature where it is supposed to be. He is lean and he's certainly not fat, but he's on the lighter side of where he should be. In normal circumstances that is not an issue, but he's got a huge fight on at the moment and he could have done with some reserves."


	11. Chapter 11

An hour and a half past. Donna, Jack, and Martha had all been able to just sit and relax for a moment. They also had a drink and something to eat. None of them were really that interested in it, but it had been a long time since they'd had any sustenance. Nurses came in and out of the room where the Doctor was being kept unconscious and they were recording his vitals. His heart rates had come down a little.

They were still elevated but they had got his blood oxygen levels back up to a good level and the blueness had gone from his extremities. His body temperature had dropped back down to 22 degrees. He was still feverish but it was not raging as it had been. Martha was too cautious to allow herself to be optimistic that the worst was over, but she was confident that for now he was moving in the right direction.

Jack knew enough to know that too. He was no longer getting worse. He was starting to get better. He hoped that was down to the anti-viral and that they were stopping the viral cells invading his systems from replicating. Perhaps they could relax for a while now. Even if relaxing was not truly something that was an option he was fairly sure that Martha could now afford the time to go and get her ankle checked out.

He knew that she wasn't comfortable by the way that she was sitting with it raised awkwardly. She had not yet taken her boot off. It was a military trick and something that she would know as a medic. If she had taken her boot off she would probably have sought attention sooner but the stiff leather would have prevented too much swelling and would provide support.

Jack went out of the room. He spoke to one of the nurses and a few minutes later a medic brought a wheelchair in for her. Martha sighed. She knew she was not going to get away with it for ever. Donna remained with the Doctor, but Jack went with Martha to make sure that she didn't evade proper attention.

"Doctor Jones," the medic that was dealing with her nodded. She carried a higher rank than he did within the field.

"Doctor Raynes," Martha acknowledged.

"What can I do for you?"

"I injured my right ankle when being winched up from the cargo vessel."

"Okay, I am just going to get the portable X-ray and the ultra-sound. We will do the full tests straight away in order to rule out any significant injury," he offered. "If you could sit up there on the treatment couch and remove your boot and sock?" he instructed.

"Do you need a hand?" Jack asked her as she gingerly went to unfasten the laces in her boot. "Sit back, let me do it," he offered. Martha did as she was told. Jack tenderly unfastened the double knot in her laces and then unwound them from around the top of her boot where the excess lace had been wrapped. Her boots were tiny so there was plenty of lace. He took the lace right out the boot down over her ankle and to the bridge of her foot and then carefully eased it off. Martha gripped the side of the bed as the loss of the boot caused a new level of pain to explode right through the side of her ankle. "I'm sorry," Jack acknowledged knowing that it was hurting. He popped her boot down on the floor and then carefully removed her sock. Now the boot was off her ankle was throbbing and swelling.

"Right, let's have a look at you," Doctor Raynes suggested as he came back in. He had two assistants bringing the equipment in that would give them immediate access to the scans needed to diagnose or rule out significant injury. That Martha had been treating the Doctor led him to believe that it was not going to be too serious, until he saw that there was already a line of bruising following the base of Martha's foot at the outside of her ankle. He took a cushion from the chair in the treatment room and he put it on the bed and got Martha to lift her leg up onto it so it was resting on the calf but her heel was off the bed. "Just relax if you can," he offered. "Where about are you experiencing the pain?"

"It is along the outside of my ankle," Martha advised.

"To the bony aspect of your ankle or to your foot?" he checked.

"I am not sure, both I think?"

"Can you remember what the mechanism of the injury was?"

"No, I have no idea. We were being winched up and the waves were high and we hit the deck again. I just know I hit the deck and the pain was significant," Martha advised.

"Can you move your ankle?" he asked. "Flex your foot up for me?" Martha did but it was painful. He supported her foot at the heel and eased her foot down and to the side. It was painful but she could tolerate it until he rotated her foot to the side. She jerked and pulled away from him when he did that but she barely squeaked, but the grip that she had on Jack's hand became like a tight vice. He felt into the side of her foot and then up into the bony aspect of the side of her ankle. Both were exquisitely painful. "Let's get the X-ray done," he suggested. He put the film on the bed and got Martha to hold her foot in three different positions so he could get good images. He then got them transferred straight onto the screen in the room so he could look at them.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news?" he asked Martha as he stood in front of the images.

"I will stick with the good news, thank you," Martha told him. There wasn't going to be any bad news. Yeah, it hurt, but that was all it was. A couple of days resting it and she was going to be fine. There wasn't going to be any bad news. She was far too busy for bad news.

"Okay, the good news is that there is no displacement and no fragmentation," he told her.

"What?" Martha knew that good news was only going to be associated with an ankle fracture and there was no way that was possible. Not only was it going to be highly inconvenient it just wasn't going to have happened to her.

"What is the bad news?" Jack asked on Martha's behalf.

"There is a fracture here across the lateral malleolus," he offered and moved out the way of the X-ray so that they could both see it. "It is low down on the fibula there and it doesn't look like it is going to interfere with the actual function of the joint, so, I would be inclined to monitor conservative healing," he advised. "We will put a temporary cast on now and it will feel much better and we will get you booked in for a follow up in 72 hours for a new cast to be put on. We will see what it looks like when the associated swelling has resolved, but I think we will be looking at three to four weeks in a non-weight bearing cast followed by three to four weeks in a walking boot," he advised Martha.

"That is ridiculous," Martha stated defiantly as if her will alone was going to change that quite definite line on the film of her ankle.

"You broke your ankle," Jack told her plainly. "And, then you walked all the way in from the chopper on it and you have been treating the Doctor with it, both on the chopper and back here," he reminded her. "I always knew you were one tough cookie."

"I've not broken my ankle," Martha stated and Jack chuckled as he hugged her. "How am I going to be able to look after the Doctor if I've broken my ankle? There is absolutely no way they will allow me to maintain a position of active duty."

"You're right," Doctor Raynes agreed. "I expect that you will be able to continue providing consult on the matter under the circumstances. Let me get you some analgesia and then we will apply the cast."

"I don't want any pain relief."

"Yes you do," Jack told her. "The Doctor is stable now. You can start to relax, and when you do? That is going to hurt, and you will be better able to consult if you're not distracted," Jack told her. "Now, you need to start following the instructions you would be giving. You're CMO for UNIT UK, you need to be setting an example, Martha."

Doctor Raynes gave Martha some painkillers. She just took paracetamol and codeine to begin with to see if that was going to be enough. She was lucky that it wasn't displaced and it was more a crack than a significant break so once it was cast she was sure that it would feel better. They applied a temporary cast to her ankle. Getting her foot into position was painful and she gripped hold of Jack's hand but she didn't complain audibly. They pulled a stocking on from her toes to her knee and then added a layer of cotton wool bandaging before moulding long warm wet strips of plaster around her heel and up the sides of her leg. It was warm and it hugged the skin and it felt nicer than she expected it to do. They applied several layers of bandage over the top of that to keep her foot and ankle immobile but still allow room for the swelling that would begin to take hold now she had removed her tight boot. She was lucky she had been wearing it. She guessed if she had not then the blow to crack the bone through her boot would have caused a very significant ankle injury without it. At least she didn't regularly have to hop on and off boats from helicopters and at least she hadn't broken her ankle tripping over a kerb or something mundane.

An update on Martha's injury was sent to the commander of the Valiant. Colonel Hartley agreed that she could consult at least until the Valiant landed but that she was off duty when it came to direct doctoring. It meant that she could sit in the Doctor's room and monitor him and that was all she wanted to do.

She had to remain in the treatment room for an hour after the cast had been applied to let it dry and to make sure there wasn't any immediate swelling. She was then told that she had to use a wheelchair for the rest of the day and that crutches would not be provided immediately. That infuriated her a little, but Jack warned her to behave. When she went back into the Doctor's room Donna could not believe to see that she was sitting in a wheelchair with her ankle in a cast. She was stunned to find out that she had actually broken it.

Martha was just relieved to see that the Doctor's temperature had come down by almost another full degree and that his hearts were beating strongly and equally. There was still no news from the science laboratories with regards the nature of the virus, but as far as he was doing he remained stable and there was a small improvement. A nurse was in the room and she was rubbing his feet. There was still a worrying amount of blotchiness on the skin and Martha hoped that did not get any worse. She did not want him to end up losing toes because of it.

Martha wasn't naive enough to think that the slight reduction in temperature and his stronger outward appearance meant he was beating the virus. What it meant that what they were doing for him, keeping him deeply unconscious, providing him fluid and nutrient and medication intravenously, breathing for him through a ventilator that was providing him oxygen at a slightly higher pressure than normal breaths in order to keep his lungs open was supporting him and preventing him from declining further. It was buying them some more time to figure out what to do or to allow him the chance to begin to win the fight. He still had a long way to go and the forest remained dense, but it looked like he might actually make it back to UNIT HQ in London.


	12. Chapter 12

It was nine o clock in the morning when the Valiant arrived back over the UNIT HQ in London. It was Friday morning. Donna had gone shopping with the Doctor in Kingston on Wednesday morning. Two days had passed. If she had ever thought that shopping was going to be the biggest trial she would face with the Doctor then she had not understood how difficult things could have got. She had heard the medics having a discussion with regards to the Doctor's condition. They had not celebrated anything more than him having made it to UNIT.

When Donna heard one of the nurses comment that at least he'd not died on the Valiant and under their care she had been outraged, only Captain Jack had prevented her from going and giving the nurse who had said it what for. Jack had reminded her that the Doctor was important to UNIT and that what had been done to him was not their fault and that he did remain critically ill and they were right. He had not died on the way back to UNIT HQ and that meant that they had more resources available to them to help him get better and top on the list for that was the TARDIS. As soon as they got down to the ground that was where Jack was going. He was going to the TARDIS and he was going to find out if there was anything she could do for him.

The Valiant had the proper facilities to medevac the Doctor down to UNIT HQ facilities without disrupting the treatment he was receiving. The only thing they could not do was take the ventilator down with them, but that did not mean they stopped breathing for him. They transferred him onto a manual oxygen tank with an ambubag attached to the intubation tube sited down into his lungs and a nurse travelled with them. Her only job on the way down was to carry on the same rhythm of breathing for him. Squeezing oxygen into his lungs and allowing him to exhale and maintaining his oxygen levels.

Martha was quite appalled that when she went into the medical helicopter she was also noted down as being a patient on the medevac. Her ankle was aching a bit but she was not in need of a medevac. When she got into the helicopter she hopped to the board and rubbed her name off it and then hopped back into the seat directly beside the Doctor's gurney so she could continue to monitor him on the way down. Jack was amused by her stubbornness.

The helicopter took off from the Valiant. It was only a ten minute flight down to the roof of the UNIT HQ building where the hospital facilities were and where Martha was in charge. When one of her nurses came out with a wheelchair to fetch her she glared at them. She was going to have to speak to the base commander and insist that she remained on consulting duties as far as the Doctor was concerned. In reality all that meant was that she sat by his bed with her leg up monitoring him, but she knew what she was looking for and she didn't want anyone else doing that and if they did not allow that then she would be on forced medical leave and then she'd not be able to spend the time with him at all.

Martha still supervised the Doctor's transfer into a private room within the hospital area that she ran. He was attached back up to the ventilator and all of the monitoring devices. The trip down from the Valiant had done him no additional harm and he was settled in the area. Martha briefed them all on what had happened and where they were up to. The medical sciences team had already been liaising with the same group on the valiant about the virus and results were pending. They took additional bloods from the Doctor to run comparisons to see if the number of virus cells had increased or decreased over the last ten hours.

It was recommended that Donna went home. She was reluctant to do so at first, but Martha promised to ring her if there was the slightest change in the Doctor's condition. She was as confident as she could be that he was going to remain stable under their treatment and that the next big thing would be when they decided to see if he could breathe for himself and they brought him out of the heavy sedation he was under to see how he was then. He was still so weak that it was not something that would be considered for at least another day. The longer he remained stable in that condition the better his body had a chance to fight the infection and to survive it.

The TARDIS had been moved from Kingston onto UNIT HQ so that it was secure and safe. Jack took a blood sample of the Doctor's over to the TARDIS. He was sure that she would know that her pilot had been taken and that he was desperately ill. She was connected to him in a way that none of them could understand even if they did their best to appreciate it. Jack went into the TARDIS sickbay and gave the TARDIS the blood sample to analyse. She flashed her lights in what appeared to be a display of anger and he patted the equipment in there. He knew exactly how she felt, but he needed to know if they could do anything to assist him. He downloaded all the current medical data that they had on the Doctor. A drawer in the back of the sickbay opened. Inside there was a drip bag containing a milky looking fluid. There was a label on it stating that it was a medicated suspension that would support him and boost his immune system and enable him to continue to fight, but that there wasn't much else they could do for him but to wait and hope that he could fight it to completion.

Jack took the drip back and they put it up according to the instructions on the bag. It was to run slowly over a period of six hours so there wasn't a sudden boost in his immune system which could have sparked the dangerously high fevers again. The science team came back and confirmed that there were fewer viral cells in his blood stream now than there had been when the first sample was taken on the Valiant. That was the first tangible bit of good news for them. The infection was less severe. He was going in the right direction. They just had to continue supporting him and give him time.

Martha did not go home and she did not go sick. She remained on campus. On the third day she was given further X-rays to check that she remained suitable for a conservative treatment. It looked like she did so she was put into a more comfortable and less bulky cast. She elected to have a lilac coloured casting material put on and as soon as that was dry she was back at the Doctor's bedside on crutches.

On the fourth day the morning blood test was taken down to be tested and it came back showing that there was no viral cells in his blood stream. He still had an elevated white blood count, but it was not significant and his temperature was normal. His hearts were beating well and his blood oxygen level was good even if he remained sedated and ventilated. A discussion was had with Martha and the medics that she instructed but carried out the actual doctoring. They decided that they were going to reduce the level of sedation and see if they could bring him up a little. If he started to respond positively and he remained stable then they would that afternoon try him without the ventilation and see if he was capable of breathing for himself.

It was tense. When they reduced his sedation his heart rates increased initially but then they settled back down again. Donna and Jack were both on site as well throughout the day to provide support and willing him to do well so that they could see if he would wake up by the end of the day. When he had managed with the first reduction in sedation they reduced it again. It was clear after half an hour at the reduced rate that he was fighting against the intubation tube down his throat. He started to gag on it and his heart rates increased again because of that.

The nurses calmly removed it despite Donna and Jack almost panicking as much as the Doctor seemed to be. Even when Martha explained that it was a normal reflex coming back in line it wasn't easy to watch. The Doctor took a shaky breath of his own. They put him on oxygen under pressure to assist him. He was still wheezing a little with the effect of the virus causing fluid and scar tissue on his lungs. They were going to have to monitor that as it was a potential complication as he continued to recover.

He was breathing calmly and evenly in a comfortable medicated sleep once they had finished reducing the sedation and the ventilator. They decided to allow him to continue to rest with that medication for a period and ensure that his lungs continued to cope without the ventilation. When he had gone a further two hours without his breathing deteriorating any further they removed the sedation from the drip altogether. He was still receiving pain relief and other medications to assist his recovery, but, he was no longer being kept asleep by chemicals. The question that remained on everyone's lips was whether he was actually going to wake up and if he did how he was going to be. It was fairly clear that he was not going to be waking up fine and ready to get on with his shopping trip to Kingston as if nothing had happened. They just hoped that he woke up coherent and capable of continuing to recover.

When it got to ten at night and he hadn't shown any inclination of waking up Martha gave the instruction for Donna and Jack to leave for the night. They could come back first thing in the morning and if there was any deterioration then she would call them back in, but he was sleeping and even if he had not woken he seemed to be comfortable and he remained stable and perhaps that was the best he could be for now. He needed the time to recover and to recuperate as well.

When the night nurse came in and suggested to Martha what she had suggested to Donna and Jack she put her foot down. She was not going to leave him without someone there that he knew. If he did wake and he was in a hospital bed surrounded by medics that he did not know then it was going to be hard for him and she was not going to do that to him. She was going to stay with him, but that did not mean she was not going to relax and get some sleep.

The wing backed chairs in the hospital were big enough for her to curl up in, the only downside was the cast on her broken ankle. She eased that up onto the side of the Doctor's bed, there was plenty of room and he was sleeping deeply. Martha sat like that reading some reports that had come in from other areas of the hospital, she had tried to suggest that because she had a broken ankle she shouldn't have to do all the paperwork that came with the administration of the hospital, but she wasn't going to get out of that without losing the consultation position and then the Doctor would be there on his own.


	13. Chapter 13

He didn't know where he was. He didn't know what was wrong with him. His memory was vague hints of shopping and presents and cake. Every inch of his body hurt and he didn't think that it was possible to be as tired and as worn as he felt. His throat was sore and dry and it felt cracked and like he needed something to drink. He needed water, but he barely had the energy to open his eyes never mind think about getting a drink.

When he did dare to open his eyes the lights in the room he was in were dimmed. He blinked. His eyes didn't want to stay open at all. His chest ached and hurt and he didn't feel like he could move. He didn't know where he was but he could tell that he was in a hospital. He could feel the rippling of a mattress beneath him and hear the whirr of monitors. He could smell cleaning fluids and sickness and a faint floral perfume. He felt like his mouth had been filled with glass and that it was being dragged up and down his throat as he breathed.

He turned his head to see if there was any one he could ask for a drink. He didn't think he could be feeling as bad as he was and not have someone close by even if he was in hospital. He didn't want to think about what they had done to him to make him feel how he was feeling. He tried to lift his hands to his face to see if he had actually regenerated but he didn't feel like he had the physical strength to do it. He groaned with the effort.

His eyes were slow to focus in the room. There was someone beside his bed. It took him a few moments to process what he was seeing with what he knew. When he realised who it was beside him he felt an immense relief wash over him. It was Martha. She'd not let them do anything to him. For a moment the relief and the fatigue were more significant than his thirst and his eye lids sunk to block out the view of Martha beside his bed. She'd not immediately jumped up and the lights were dim and he managed to rationalise that she was asleep.

He didn't know how long he had blanked out for, but he coughed. His whole chest alighted with flame and tightness that left him feeling like he couldn't draw breath again. He wheezed and coughed again. Blimey it hurt so much and it made him feel like his lungs were collapsing in his chest just so that he couldn't cough again. He needed to know what had happened to him. Even if he wasn't sure he would be able to stay awake long enough to find out. He needed to know it and he was thirsty. So thirsty. He coughed again. Not the quiet subdued coughs of before but a deep barking hacking cough that brought a harsher agony to his chest. He didn't want to do that again. He groaned at the pain. How could just breathing hurt like that?

"Doctor?" Martha eased herself up to stand beside his bed. She looked down on him. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed but they were open. "Hey? Hello there," she commented and caressed his head. "I can't tell you how good it is to see you there," she offered.

"Thir… sty?" his voice was as cracked as his dried out lips. He was wheezing and not breathing as cleanly as he had been while asleep.

"I bet you are," Martha offered. There was a beaker of water on the bedside table with a straw in it just in case he did wake up. She held the straw to his lips so he could sip the water. "Nice and slowly, Doctor," Martha warned. She let him have a couple more mouthfuls of water and then she put the cup down again. She had a clean tissue on the bedside table and she dipped the corner of it in the water and then used that to dab his lips for him.

"More?" he wheezed. Martha gave him another drink. He drained half the beaker in little sips and then faded back into unconsciousness again. "Well done, Doctor," Martha whispered and caressed his head for a few minutes to make sure that he was comfortable and asleep again. She then called the night medics in to change the oxygen mask over for a nasal line and to note that he had woken and had a drink of water and then gone back to sleep again.

Over the following two days the Doctor only woke for short periods at a time but he was regaining his strength. He was becoming more interactive in the periods when he was awake and by the end of the third afternoon he was able to sit up against pillows for a while. It was only then that he noticed that his arm was in a sling which he supposed was linked to the pain in his shoulder, but more importantly he noticed that Martha had her leg in a cast. He wasn't sure how that fit with his memories of what had happened. There had been no real discussion of it yet. They did not want him to get overly stressed by the events when he was still in the earliest stages of his recovery.

"Martha?" the Doctor waited until she was alone in the room again. There were often different medics in there with him and Martha and he had not realised why. Now it made sense. She was there for him, but if she had an injury she would not be on duty. She should not be on duty. Not even for him she should be resting and getting better. He knew that in his head, but his hearts were clinging onto the fact that when Donna left and Jack left that Martha remained there with him and she was the one telling everyone what to do and how to look after him.

"Hey, what can I do for you?" Martha asked him. She had thought he'd gone back to sleep. She got up from her chair and hopped over to his bedside.

"Your leg?" he pointed toward the lilac cast poking out the bottom of her cargo trousers. "What happened?"

"I broke my bleeding ankle," Martha commented and rolled her eyes. "Can you believe it? It's not serious though. Just the lateral malleolus and it's being treated conservatively so I guess I'm lucky it wasn't worse."

"How?"

"I was being winched off a boat onto a helicopter in the middle of the ocean and the sea was really rough and we didn't get off cleanly because of the waves and I hit the deck of the ship pretty hard," Martha advised him.

"Boat?" the Doctor checked and then he frowned. He closed his eyes for a moment as if he was thinking. "Was I… on a boat?"

"Yeah, you were, but, I think we should wait before we have this discussion," Martha told him.

"Why?"

"Because, we need to have a proper discussion about it all and I would rather do that when you have recovered enough to string at least five words together without having to stop for air," Martha told him.

"I can do that…" he offered and then realised that was only four words. "See."

"Hmmm," Martha just rolled her eyes at him and then caressed his head. "What do you remember?"

"Shopping with Donna," the Doctor advised. "And scanning and…" he frowned. "Bylaxians?"

"You contracted a virus, Doctor," Martha told him. "It has made you incredibly ill, but, despite all odds you are recovering now and you're doing better, but it is going to take time. It has taken a significant toll on your systems, but you're getting better every day now. We were monitoring your survival an hour at a time when we first got to you. You were very sick indeed."

"My memories are… all fuzzy," he admitted as his eyes began to close again. Martha caressed his head as he slipped back off to sleep again. His exhaustion meaning that she wasn't yet drawn into telling him that he was so sick because he was deliberately given the virus in order to turn him into some kind of antibody farm.

A further week passed before the Doctor was more able to cope with being awake and sitting out of bed for a while. There was scar tissue on his lungs and his hearts were still recovering from the damage done by the virus so that meant he got tired very quickly, but when Donna had come in that morning he had already been awake for half an hour. He had been bathed by one of the nurses and he'd had some breakfast. Just toast with marmalade. He found eating tiring and draining but he had to get used to doing it again. They weren't going to keep him linked to a drip forever and he was getting bored and frustrated with the length of time it was taking him to heal.

"Come on then, Spaceman," Donna suggested as she pushed a wheelchair into the room.

"Where are we going?"

"Well, Martha is happy enough with you for her to take a day off," Donna advised. "So, she has gone home for the day, so I thought we would finish what we started and go shopping," Donna commented. "Then you can come and explain to my mother why I didn't get her a birthday gift or a gift card but why I didn't see her for her birthday either." The Doctor looked aghast at the idea and she laughed. "Course I'm not taking you shopping or to see my mum. Do you think I'm that cruel?" she asked of him.

"I'd hoped not."

"Dumbo. We're going to get some fresh air. It's a nice day and you've been cooped up for far too long. There is a cup of tea and a piece of cake with your name on it just in the canteen and then we can take it out onto the terrace and have it in the sunshine. What do you think?" Donna prompted. "Better than stopping up here in bed?"

"Yeah, I think so," he agreed but eyed the wheelchair with a degree of suspicion. He struggled to manage the couple of steps from bed to the chair hanging onto a nurse so he knew he wasn't going to be able to walk down for tea and cake, but a wheelchair? He swung his legs round over the edge of the bed. He had ridiculous stockings on that the nurses had to fight to get on over his legs. It didn't help that Donna couldn't help a little giggle each time she saw them. They were bottle green and she didn't think they could be any more offensive for him. She took his trousers from where they were folded at the side of the bed. He had got dressed himself the previous morning but the effort in doing that had left him exhausted so Donna assisted him. He had a trousers and a T-shirt on. Donna had got used to helping him out. She attached the oxygen line that ran to his nose to a portable oxygen cylinder which tucked under the seat of the wheelchair so it was going to go with them. She attached the drip to a pole at the rear of the wheelchair so that would still run without being hindered.

"You set?" Donna checked as she made sure his feet were on the footplates.

"I think so," he confirmed though just moving from the bed and helping Donna to sort him out had left him feeling a little tight chested and breathless. He made sure he breathed in through his nose before he started to get dizzy. His bypass and any reserves he had as a Time Lord had been decimated by the virus.

They were in a military hospital managed by UNIT and run by Martha. Donna took him down in the lift and to a canteen that had been arranged like a café. There were three other injured people there. They were in UNIT clothing but not that associated with active duty but they appeared to be some kind of training issue with tracksuit trousers and a T-shirt with a UNIT emblem on it. The Doctor looked down to the T-shirt that he had on. He'd not realised it was the same.

Donna took him out beyond the café and to a vacant table on a sun terrace. There were planters around the area with large green leaved jungle plants that looked quite spectacular. It was well maintained and it was pleasant. The sun was warm but not too bright. "Are you okay here for a moment if I go and get the drinks?" Donna checked with him as she pushed him up to the table.

"Yeah, thank you," the Doctor confirmed. Donna left him there and then went out to the canteen counter and picked two slices of stodgy looking chocolate and fudge cake. She also got a banana for the Doctor. She got herself a latte and him a pot of tea. She had to wait for a moment as they needed to go flush the latte machine out. Donna leant on the counter and made sure that the Doctor was alright. She wasn't surprised to see that he had already attracted attention, she just hoped that the soldier who had approached him could see that he wasn't going to be up to anything significant.

"You're the Doctor," the soldier commented. He was standing on his own two feet but he had a cane and was leaning on it as he stood.

"Yeah," the Doctor confirmed.

"It is good to see you out of bed," the soldier offered. "We were all very concerned when we received the briefing and found out how unwell you were," he advised. "They were very worried that you weren't going to make it. It's good to see you up and about."

"Not sure I would consider it up and about yet, but thank you for your concern," the Doctor offered.

"Would you mind if I sat down for a moment?" the soldier checked as he leant on the cane.

"Not at all." The Doctor didn't think he had any option to agree. He couldn't very well tell an injured soldier that he couldn't sit down for a minute could he? "What happened to you?" he checked.

"The Sontarans," he confirmed. "That's why I wanted to come and talk to you. I'd not have intruded otherwise I can see that you're still poorly," he offered. "I just wanted to say thank you."

"Thank you?"

"I was injured by the Sontarans. I received a glancing blow with one of their weapons," he offered and pulled his shirt up to receive an ugly looking scar that scored through his abdomen and across his chest. The Doctor could see it matched the horrible wounds inflicted by the Sontaran weapons. "I was in a holding position up in the roof of the warehouse and when I got hit I fell and broke my femur which is why I've got this," he raised the cane. "I know that it's nothing like what those bastards did to you, Sir," the soldier added. "I just wanted to say that I am very grateful for what you did during the Sontaran attack. If it was not for you I'd be dead, we'd all be dead. If there is anything we can do for you, if you are going to make a move against the people that did this to you, then there are plenty of us who will be behind you."

"Um, thank you," the Doctor confirmed.

"I will leave you to it," the soldier advised as he saw Donna was returning with the tray. The soldier got up and moved back into the hospital. He had a check-up appointment for his leg that he needed to get to.

"Making new friends?" Donna asked the Doctor but he seemed to be deep in thought. She transferred the drinks and cake from the tray onto the table and then slotted the tray into a vacant seat. "Hey? You okay?" Donna checked and rubbed his thigh. He looked to her but didn't hear what she had said. "You okay?"

"I'm recovering from a virus," the Doctor stated.

"Yeah," Donna rubbed his leg. "I know, and I know it is horrible, but you are recovering. It is just going to take some time because of the damage that was done. I don't think it will be long before you're running around without any issues. It's hard, but you just need to be patient."

"No, that's not what I meant," the Doctor commented. "I'm recovering from a virus," he repeated. "So, why do I consistently have the feeling that you are all keeping something from me, and why does that soldier think that I had something done to me?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe he was just mistaken?" Donna suggested.

"No," the Doctor shook his head. "He said that the Sontarans shooting him was nothing compared to what was done to me," the Doctor commented. He paused to take a breath, making sure he tried to take it in through his nose so it was oxygen rich. He wheezed slightly as his head was a whirr of fragmented memories that didn't make sense. "He will join me in… a move against… the people who did this… to me," the Doctor wheezed. "What was… he talking about… Donna?"

"You need to keep calm, Doctor," Donna told him. "Look at you getting all wheezy again?" Donna warned. "Breathe through your nose. Long deep breaths."

"No… tell me."

"Doctor, you need to relax and breathe properly. You're not well enough to be getting stressed. Shhh, calm down," Donna got up to rub his back as the Doctor wheezed noisily. She hated seeing him like this but Martha had assured them both that the scar tissue was reducing and he was healing it was just going to be slow and steady.

"Tell… me."

"Well, think about it Spaceman, do you really think I'm going to be sitting down here and having a conversation with you when you're rattling like a rat in a teakettle?" Donna asked him. "You need to calm down and breathe. This is exactly why it has not been discussed with you yet and that has been an agreed decision made by your medics, by Martha, and by Jack and I."

"Can't…"

"Sorry, Doctor, but you need to calm down."

"Can't… breathe," the Doctor wheezed. He leant forward, his free hand came up to the right side of his chest as pain spiked through it.

"Don't lean forward, Doctor, lean back. It will make it easier," Donna offered, she tried to ease him back into the wheelchair but he was gasping and grimacing. Donna glanced over to the café table where there was a young female soldier watching with concern. Donna mouthed 'get help' to her and the soldier got up and hurried to one of the emergency points on the wall to get them assistance. "You're okay, Spaceman," Donna held him. "You're okay," she assured him as she could feel him straining to get air in and against the pain. He looked at her and there was an sense of panic and fear in his eyes. "You're okay…"


	14. Chapter 14

A medical team arrived. They immediately ushered Donna away as they seemed to swarm around the Doctor as he sat in the wheelchair. That just seemed to panic the Time Lord more, but within minutes he was on a gurney and was being wheeled through to the emergency medical area leaving Donna still standing on the terrace. She watched him being rushed away as he was pushed through double doors and out of sight she sunk down onto the seat. She realised that her hands were shaking and there were tears on her face.

Donna tried to find out where they had taken the Doctor, but when she asked one person the response that she was not military personnel almost cost them their eardrums as Donna yelled that he was her friend at her. A nurse that had spent a lot of time dealing with the Doctor came and showed Donna into a small seating area where she could wait. She said she'd come back with information as soon as she could, but she didn't return. No one came.

Donna was left standing or sitting and then pacing for what seemed like forever. Each time a medic passed the room she tried to get information from them, but the most she got was another apologetic nurse who told her that they were still trying to get him stabilised but that someone would come and tell her all she needed to know as soon as they could. Stabilised? That was serious wasn't it?

It was two and a half hours since they had been sitting down to tea when the door to the waiting room opened. Donna had given up pacing and was sitting in one of the chairs with her elbows on her knees, staring at the tiled floor through bleary eyes as she waited. She was stunned when it was Martha who came in through them. She had been off for the day and there she was in civilian clothing and on her crutches. That she had been called in worried Donna more, surely they'd only needed to give him a bit more oxygen or something to help him out?

"How is he?" Donna rose up to see Martha.

"Maybe we should sit down?" Martha suggested. She swung confidently through her crutches to go and sit on the chairs. The suggestion that the Doctor's condition could not be discussed standing stung Donna with new fears.

"I just want to know how he is?"

"Can we sit down?" Martha asked. "My ankle is bothering me a bit today," she suggested.

"Oh, yes, of course, sorry," Donna accepted. She went to sit down with Martha on one of the seats. She allowed the medic a moment to get comfortable as she crossed her cast leg up over the other. Donna wasn't quite sure that was how she was supposed to be elevating it, but she had come to learn that Martha was one of the most senior medics on base so she wasn't going to be telling her off. "Martha?"

"The Doctor is pretty poorly right now," Martha started cautiously.

"Just tell me? Please don't try to sugar coat it. I just need to know what has happened to him."

"Okay," Martha nodded. She should have known that she'd just want the news given to her. "In the most basic of terms the Doctor has suffered a fairly significant heart attack."

"A what?!" Donna exclaimed as tears burst into her eyes immediately. "A heart attack?!"

"His right sided heart has been suffering with the most residual damage from the virus," Martha reminded Donna and she nodded. She knew that. There was scar tissue on his hearts but the right was worst and they had been monitoring it as that in combination with the scar tissue in his lungs left him quickly out of breath and exhausted. But this? "His right heart stopped beating for a while. It is going again now, but not very well at all. I am sorry that you were left alone for a while, but we were doing a test to see how well his heart is functioning. That involves injecting a dye into the blood stream and then monitoring its flow through the heart. We can see that his right heart isn't doing very well and the function is very poor in some places. We also know there is less significant damage to his left heart too. We already knew that the virus had attacked the heart muscles and that there was scar tissues that are slowly healing and repairing. They have formed something what is generally termed plaques in his hearts and it is interrupting the blood flow."

"The blood flowing through his hearts?" Donna checked.

"No, not directly, it is affecting the blood flowing to the muscles of his actual hearts, but then because they don't have a good blood supply the muscle tissues aren't working properly which then means that the hearts don't contract well enough to pump the blood around the body and that is when the most serious issues arise."

"And that is what is happening to him?"

"It is more significant in his right heart so we consider him to have had a right sided heart attack. We are hoping that the damage done to his other systems because of the loss of his heart for a while will be minimal due to his left heart maintaining a rhythm throughout, but his blood oxygen levels did fall quite substantially. We were hoping that the scar tissue would resolve and that there would be no need for intervention," Martha told Donna. "But, when we consider this latest complication I don't think we are going to have a choice but to intervene. I have called UNIT's best cardiologist in. He will be here within a couple of hours and we will look at how we will proceed. I hope we will be able to remove the offending plaques with a minimally invasive procedure, but we won't know that until our cardiologist has had a look and we do some more tests," Martha advised. "The Doctor is stable enough for us to do that as a matter of urgency but not as an emergency. If he were to deteriorate or have another attack then we would not be able to wait and intervention would be immediate."

"You're talking about surgery?" Donna confirmed.

"Yes, hopefully we will be able to access his hearts through an artery either in his groin or through his wrist as we would a human. If we can get to the right places in his hearts to deal with the plaques that way then we will be able to avoid opening his chest up. If not then it looks like he may need to have open heart surgery."

"Oh no?" Donna commented and started to sob fully.

"I know it is frightening, Donna, but we have the best people and he is in the best hands."

"Can I see him?"

"Yes, in a moment, I will take you through to see him. We have him sedated full again which means we have had to take over his breathing onto the ventilator. It is the best way to reduce the stress on his hearts so we will be keeping him that way until we have done what we need to do. His right heart isn't beating well so there is a risk that he could have another attack, and that is then increasing the stress on his left heart significantly. We have given him some drugs to assist that, but they can have some nasty side effects so it is another reason why it is best to keep him unconscious. He would potentially be feeling pretty dizzy and disorientated otherwise and that can be distressing and then increase the stress on his hearts, so keeping him unconscious is the best way forward for him."

"Okay."

"I need to ask Donna, did anything happen? We have been monitoring his hearts and have been aware of the damage but he had been coping. Did anything happen to cause him additional stress or did it just come out of nowhere?"

"I took him in the wheelchair down to the terrace to have a cup of tea and get some fresh air," Donna advised. "He had his drip and his oxygen and I had helped him to get dressed so he didn't get too tired out doing that. While I was getting him a drink another soldier came and spoke to him and he must have said something about the Bylaxians doing this to him deliberately because when I went back to him he wanted to know what we'd been keeping from him and why the soldier said that it had been done to him and about marching off to war against them," Donna explained. "He just got so breathless and he was panicking about not being able to breathe. I called someone to get help and then they arrived and they just took him away."

"I am sorry that no one came to explain what was happening any sooner, but the most important thing was to get him stable and to a position where we can afford to wait for the cardiologist," Martha advised. Donna nodded her understanding and she supposed if someone had popped their head into the waiting room told her he was having a heart attack and to wait that she'd have ended up having one herself. Usually when she had imagined the worst things possible when she found out what it actually was it wasn't half as bad. Her imaginations had been worse, but a heart attack? Poor Spaceman? If that soldier with the cane wanted to go and wage war against the Bylaxians for this then she'd be there with him every step!

"Martha?" Donna sighed. "What does this mean for him in the long run? My dad had a heart attack and he never recovered. He just got more and sicker over the last years of his life until he died."

"I really can't say what it means for the Doctor at the moment," Martha admitted. "It depends on how well he recovers. I don't think we can compare him to a human case study and I am sorry about your father, it does not mean the same for the Doctor, but, I can't say that it definitely isn't either. What I do know is that the Doctor has an extraordinary capacity for healing and repair when he is in the right condition to do so. I have seen him get knocked down and bounce right back up as if nothing had happened when I have been sure he'd be lad up for weeks. I am sure you have seen the same. Right now I can't see how he can't be laid up for weeks, if not longer."

"How much longer?"

"I can't say." Martha knew she wasn't answering any of the questions directly and it was unfair. "The virus has done physical damage to both his lungs and to both his hearts. As that improves he will recover, and his improvements will be what determines how he is able to continue after this. I simply don't know. I am going to have to discuss it with him in order to figure out what the long term prognosis is and if there are any implications with how he goes on. He may make a full recovery and be able to commit fully to his previous lifestyle, or, he may not recover much at all," Martha admitted. "I know it is not the answer anyone wants to hear, but it is the only one I can give at the moment. I also need to discuss with him why he has not regenerated," Martha commented.

"I am not sure what that means."

"So, he's not discussed it with you, why does that not surprise me," Martha tutted as she rolled her eyes. "He is a Time Lord and at time of death or when he is very seriously injured or ill he undergoes quite a remarkable process which triggers the energetic activation of redundant DNA," Martha advised. "Basically he spontaneously changes into another version of himself. He changes in order to defeat death. Jack actually knows more about it than I do, but he has been so sick, I'd have expected him to have regenerated."

"Is he out of danger now?"

"No," Martha told Donna plainly. She didn't want to frighten her but she couldn't offer her assurances when there none to be given. "He is seriously unwell, Donna. I am not sure how he is going to do, but as I have said his right heart is not beating effectively. It is beating but it is not holding a decent rhythm and it is only working to about a 15% capacity. That means his left heart is taking on more work and is under strain now when that is also damaged although to a lesser extent. The treatment we are giving him now is to reduce that strain long enough for us to figure out how to best repair some of the damage in his hearts. Even when we work out what we want to do for him we don't know how he will respond to it. He's not human and that is the biggest complication we face with him. If he comes through the surgery then we will be in a better position to know how he is going to be. As for the recovery he goes on to make then we clearly want him to make a full recovery, but if you have been through cardiac disease with you father then you will know that it is not always achievable.

"If he were human then I don't think he would be here now. The damage done by the virus would have been fatal. We would not have got him off the boat if he was even alive by the time we reached him. If we had of done then I think we'd now be looking at a heart transplant," Martha told Donna. "Clearly that is not something we can consider for the Doctor, but that is where we would likely be looking at as best case scenario for a human. The Doctor has got an inherent ability to heal and to recover. It may take him some tie but I think his recovery will be good if e can get him to the point where he is able to heal. He seemed to be improving gradually over the last week. I know he was starting to get frustrated but that in itself is a good thing. When he is too ill to worry and complain about medical restrictions that is when I worry the most about him," Martha offered. "For now I can't say anymore, we will know more when the cardiologist has reviewed his case. We just need to keep him supported and stable until then," Martha offered.

"And by that you mean alive don't you?" Donna checked. Martha sighed but then she nodded.


	15. Chapter 15

"Do you think we were wrong not to tell him about what the Bylaxians did to him?" Donna asked Martha?

"No, I don't," Martha offered. "I think that hindsight is a wonderful thing. If we were presented with the same scenario again would you have made a different decision about telling him when he was so unwell?" Martha asked her.

"No, I don't think so."

"I should have been more adamant with the medical brief that it did not contain his details, but I was over ruled," Martha advised. "UNIT have a strange relationship with the Doctor," Martha commented. "When they feel like it he is a hero and a legend and a representation of all things good and positive that the stars can present, other times, he is a scientific advisor on staff and is not going to receive any preferential or differential treatment," Martha offered. "So, the medical report that goes out biweekly included details of the circumstances of his ill health if not his actual medical condition."

"I should not have brought him downstairs."

"No, don't think like that. We all agreed that he could come downstairs if he was feeling up to it. That was a joint decision and it would have been nice for him to get out of that room. He has been staring at the same four walls since he came round almost a week ago. The difficulty is not what happened or what we have or have not done, it is that he is so sick again. We will just have to have the conversation with him about the Bylaxians and their actions when he is able to have it. It may be a couple of days or even longer before he is well enough and that is as long as there are no further complications. We are taking things one step at a time at the moment until he is better."

"Has Jack been told that he is really sick again?" Donna asked Martha. "He will be devastated won't he?"

"Yeah, on both accounts. He is on his way back in. He will be about an hour. Do you want to come through and sit with him now? Like I say, there isn't going to be much we can do until our cardiologist gets here and can review his test results and his anatomy."

"Thanks, Martha," Donna offered. She got up and she hugged the younger medic. "On your day off too? That is just typical and when Spaceman is up to it we need to let him know just how inconvenient he has been," Donna advised. Martha smiled. She had no doubt that Donna would give him what for, her doubts came from whether the Doctor would be well enough to receive it.

Donna was shown into the emergency treatment room where the Doctor was being monitored. She'd hoped she'd never have to see anything as terrifying as him lying on a bed with monitors and tubes all around him again, but here they were. His skin was so pale that the bluish veins near his temples were visible as they snaked up beyond his hairline. His eyes were closed and his mouth open to accommodate the tubing connecting him to the bellows of the ventilator. There was an attachment on the tube and there was a yellowish fluid in there that appeared to be giving off a white smoke that he was breathing in along with the pure oxygen being pumped into his lungs.

He had a whole array of electrodes on his chest. Many more than there had been the last time. There were some low down on his chest too and there were others on his wrists and on his ankles. Donna had seen that when they had been treating her father in hospital and it was a horrible reminder not only of how sick the Doctor was but also of that time. Like her dad the Doctor also had a blood pressure cuff around his bicep and a clip on his finger. The Doctor's dignity was being maintained by a sheet across his middle, but he was naked. There were remnants of the worst of the bruising on his boy as the virus had damaged blood vessels and across his shoulder where he had been hit by the Bylaxians. The suspicion was that they had dislocated his shoulder but that it had gone back in at some point, likely though manhandling rather than medical assistance.

Donna recalled the conversation with Martha and Jack about how slim he was and her being told that he was lean but not significantly underweight. In a week it was clear that had changed. His chest was exposed and rather than the musculature that had been seen before ribs were now rippling under skin as he'd lost body weight over the ten day fight with the virus and the damage it had done. Now a heart attack? It was so horrendously wrong Donna found it hard to think about.

She went right to his bedside and caressed his head. She almost felt scared to touch him, she had never considered him fragile before, but she was scared for him now. More scared than she had been when they'd found him on the boat. Then she had not truly understood what had been going on, but heart disease. It had taken her father from her, quickly turning him from a vibrant loving dad to a shadow of his former self. Repeated bouts of pneumonia and pulmonary oedema had taken him in the end, they couldn't let it take the Doctor too. When he'd last been hooked up to ventilation his skin had been fiery with fever, now he felt cold and clammy and Donna had to remind herself of his naturally lower body temperature or the almost waxy feel of his skin would have been too much like touching a corpse.

"Oh, Martian Boy, what are we going to do now?" She guided a wayward strand of hair away from his closed eyes. She'd seen him sleep a few times. Normally he'd wake straight away, but even if he didn't, if she managed to creep up there was always that underlying tension there as if he was going to be immediately ready for action. Now he just lay slack on the bed, machines monitoring and supporting him, the screens on both sides of his bed showing different versions of the same data. Donna looked at them as she caressed his head lightly, not sure what else there was she could do.

"We've had to modify the way that we monitor him because we want to be able to measure the output and the strength of his hearts separately," Martha explained to Donna. "This main monitor is reading his usual vital sighs, his body temperature, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, and the combined effort of his hearts as we normally would see," she explained. "It is not showing ideal conditions for him, but it is not dreadful. I think that is how we may not have been able to see quickly enough that his right heart was deteriorating. He is showing some distress here but because his left heart is compensating it looks off but not seriously off. It is a bit too fast and it's a bit shallow, but we have been seeing that and it is what happens when the heart beats too fast. The heart pumps the blood out into the body and then pumps again before the heart chambers have a chance to fully fill with blood again. This is showing a borderline level of concern," Martha offered.

"Now, compare it with this monitor. We think we have managed to isolate the pattern and rhythm of his right heart only." Martha indicated to the line of an electronic cardiogram coming up on screen. It was irregular. Some beats were barely registering and it was very fast indeed showing at almost 204 beats per minute. "We are actually seeing a bit of an improvement since we got his heart started again, it was worse than that before. It is not beating effectively, if that was his only heart then he'd have been straight into surgery. Our main concern is to minimise the strain on his left heart. He can survive short periods with only one heart beating, but he finds it incredibly uncomfortable. He has two because he does need both to function. It is not like the human kidney where there are two but it is possible to live an unhindered life with only one kidney. He does require both of his hearts to function."

"So you can't just whip that one out if it continues to deteriorate?" Donna checked.

"No, he'd not last very long at all. He certainly wouldn't be able to withstand any kind of physical exertion," Martha advised. "I think we need to wait to see what our cardiologist says, then we will have to look at the choices we have available to us and make some decisions on the appropriate level of treatment and medical intervention."

Captain Jack had returned to Cardiff overnight. He had not prepared to be away from Torchwood as long as he had been. When he'd received a call that the Doctor had been kidnapped he had immediately dropped everything and left. What he thought would be a quick rescue mission followed by tea and cake had turned into a nightmare. He'd left Gwen and Ianto for ten days and though they knew why there were things that he had to attend to that they could not. He'd agreed to go back to sort some things out as the Doctor had been doing better. He was still incredibly unwell and it broke his heart each time he saw the Time Lord struggling to breathe or to stay awake after the simplest of tasks. Even eating a sandwich had left him feeling short of breath, but he was at least sitting out of bed and capable of eating a sandwich unassisted. That was something they had feared would not be possible when they found him.

He'd also been happier to leave knowing Donna was there with him. He liked her. She took no nonsense and he was sure she'd look after the Doctor, so he had driven back to Cardiff the previous evening with the intention of fully briefing Gwen and Ianto. He was going to put some things in place to assist them in his absence and then he was going to return that afternoon. At least that was the plan. The plan he had until he received a phone call from Martha. The gist of which was that the Doctor was in intensive care on full life support fighting for his life after having a heart attack and they were trying to keep him alive until their cardiologist got there and perhaps Jack should consider coming back because they were going to have to intervene and there were going to be choices to be made and as his three closest available friends they were going to have to agree to what was decided and give consent for surgical procedures to go through.

Jack couldn't afford to care too much if Gwen was annoyed and Ianto disappointed when he hung up the phone and immediately set toward the exits. He ordered then to set up a Torchwood clearway back to London along the M4 and then he headed back at breakneck speeds.

Jack ran into the hospital and he went to where the Doctor had been located before and found a stripped bed. HE almost died on the spot and he was unsure if he would have revived. Luckily Gladys, one of the Doctor's dedicated nurses, saw him and advised that he was downstairs in an emergency cardiology treatment room on the ground floor. Jack hurried down there. He opened the door and looked in. Donna turned and saw him there, the concern, love, and fear on the Captain's face when he saw the Time Lord laid up as he was brought it all back to Donna. She got up from his bedside and went over to Jack and hugged him. As soon as he folded his strong arms around her she broke down into tears. Jack took a moment to try to console Donna. He reminded her that their Doctor was as tough as nails and had the strength of ten Cardellian muskox. Jack looked over her shoulder at the Time Lord as he said those words and found that he didn't actually believe it. His friend looked old and frail and sick.

Martha came back into the room and gave Jack the same brief that she had given Donna. Jack had slightly more medical knowledge than Donna but when it came to the Doctor a lot of what they knew was obsolete. The very fact that they were discussing about the strain his left heart was under due to the ineffectiveness of his more seriously damaged right showed just how different things were. A young care assistant came in and made them drinks as the three of them just sat with the Doctor and waited. They caressed his head and they held his hand and they included him in conversation in the pretence that it was to support him and to keep him company. He was sedated into a medical coma beyond any awareness, it was not for him, it was the only thing they could do to keep themselves sane.


	16. Chapter 16

Martha used her medical authority to get updates, but they consisted of him remaining in surgery and the procedure going as planned and nothing more than that. She was paged five hours later and she left the waiting room promising to return to let Jack and Donna know what was going on as soon as possible. She was called to the recovery room and she was immensely pleased to see that the Doctor was in there. He was ventilated and her initial observations of him showed he was a reasonably colour, he was pale which was to be expected when he was so ill, but his lips were pink.

She checked the monitors, playing a special notice to the independent recordings of his right heart. It was beating. It wasn't a particularly strong or healthy rhythm, it was tired and lazy, but it wasn't skipping beats or racing or failing to pump blood. There was definitely improvements and the photo images of the scans taken after surgery showed a good blood flow through the heart muscle when prior to surgery it had been reduced to zero in places. They just had to see how the heart muscle itself would improve and heal over the coming days and weeks. It would heal as any injured muscle would. As long as none of the tissues had been starved of oxygen to the point of tissue death he stood to make a reasonable recovery. He was straight out of heart surgery and it was positive, that his left heart took a lot of the load also meant he was more able to recover.

His capacity to heal and to improve was now the mainstay of how he would get over it. The damage done by the virus had been reversed and the virus was gone. They would have to support him medically while he recovered but they would also have to support him emotionally. Everyone who knew him was horrified to think that the Doctor had suffered a heart attack. How he was going to feel and respond to that news was going to be difficult to determine. They were not going to be able to predict it. It was hard enough to be able to predict how he would react to the news that it was raining outside his TARDIS never mind something as serious as he had a heart attack and he still didn't know that the virus that had caused the damage had been given to him deliberately in order to turn him into an antibody farm.

They were going to have to pass information onto him in a controlled manner so that he didn't put his hearts under strain, but it was clear that unless they kept him isolated from everyone else at UNIT that things would get back to him. He could not be allowed to get excitable too soon, and he was going to be kept under heavy sedation, enough to keep him asleep. He would be asleep and ventilated at last throughout the night to give him the best chance to recover, then they would slowly bring him back round again a bit at a time so they could properly maintain his state of health and his pain levels. They had to keep him under minimal stress and that could be a tricky balancing of medications in humans, Martha was going to be heavily involved in this process with the Doctor as she was the one who would know best if he was responding in the same way as a human would in comparison to how he would normally behave.

Martha explained all they were going to do to Donna and Jack. The relief that he had made it through the surgery was good. They were then going to time the reduction in sedation so that they aimed for him to wake around mid-morning the following day. It would mean there were resources available if something did go wrong. He had that evening and the night to monitor his heart beats under full sedation and then the following day they had the afternoon and the evening to manage his medications to ensure he remained comfortable throughout.

He remained in the UNIT intensive care suite and was lying on the bed with the head end raised slightly. The foot end of the bed was also raised so that he was bent at the knees and his feet were level with his shoulders but flat along the bed. The olive green compression stockings had been put back on him in order to assist in the circulation. By mid-morning he had the ventilation completely removed and just a nasal line providing oxygen to him and he was maintaining good oxygen levels. He had electrodes all over his chest still and there was a long white strip of surgical dressing passing down the middle of his chest. It was clean having been changed when the wound was checked first thing that morning. Because of the position of his heart further away from the side of his chest than in a human with a single offset heart they had been also required to break three ribs on the right side to access it. It was going to mean he was going to be uncomfortable and sore for a while which was another reason why everything was measured and controlled and slower than usual.

By lunch time he would be able to wake but would be drowsy and exhausted with the drugs. His hearts were both looking better than they had done since he'd been found on the boat. The surgery had done as much as they could have realistically hoped. He was not out of the woods, but there was some sunlight dappling the forest floor now. The next indication of how well he was would come when he woke up. No one dared to use the word 'if' in that regard, but Martha at least knew that perhaps they should be. Not with the Doctor, though, 'if' was not part of the vocabulary associated with his recovery.

It was late afternoon rather than mid-morning when he looked like he was close to waking. Martha asked Jack and Donna to leave the room. She was very apologetic about it and it was not because she didn't want him there or because she was going to do any tests on him, it was simply because he was still heavily mediated and she didn't want him to have to try to split his focus between three of them and risk confusing him. She promised to see how he was when he woke and if she judged him capable of dealing with a brief visit she would allow them to come back in though it would likely be one by one. Jack and Donna both left the room, relegated this time to bench seats outside in the corridor.

Martha stood at the Doctor's bedside. She propped her crutches up against the wall and she lightly caressed his head for a moment before making a deliberate attempt to rouse him.

"Doctor?" she spoke authoritatively as she rubbed his shoulder. She stuck to the right shoulder as his left remained sore looking. She was sure it should have healed by now as well, but that it remained painful was likely due to his general ill health. "Come on, Doctor, it is Martha. It is time to wake up," she instructed. It took two more attempts but the Doctor grumbled some sort of garbled incoherent complaint that made Martha smile. She wasn't going to worry about him making too much sense on the cusp of heavy sedation. It would take him a moment to fight through the fog of sedation if he could manage it, if not she would lower it and then they could try again.

"That is it, Doctor, open your eyes for me?" Martha instructed as she gently caressed his cheek. She rubbed his shoulder again when he didn't open his eyes. It was that he didn't like and he slowly realised the only way to stop it from happening was to do what the voice said and open his eyes. They felt like they just wanted to close again straight away but he got a slither of light to his optic nerves. That counted.

"Hello," Martha smiled warmly at him when he did manage to open his eyes long enough to focus and found her with his gaze.

"Martha?" there was a question in his rasping tone. Oxygen and intubation had stole his voice from him. "Whah?"

"You're going to be okay," Martha assured him. "You'll be feeling strange at the moment because you have got a lot of medication in your system. It is to help keep you feeling nice and calm," she told him. "It might make you feel a bit disassociated emotionally for a bit," she explained. "Do you understand what that means?" she checked when it was unclear if he was processing what she said.

"I don't really care," the Doctor offered. Martha looked at him and didn't know if he was saying that he didn't care in response to her question, or, he was answering her question with the blasé version saying that the drugs will make him feel like he didn't really care. He gave a small but tired smile and she knew he was making an attempt to play with words.

"Very funny," Martha offered. She watched as the Doctor winced and then sighed as his eyes began to close again. "I would like you to try to stay awake for a little while if you can?" Martha commented. "Do you want a drink of water?"

"No tea?"

"Not just yet," Martha denied him.

"Oh," he confirmed then half smiled. "I don't… really care."

"Well, the drugs must be working if you don't care about tea," Martha told him. She poured him a beaker of cool water with a stray in and then held it while he had a sip. When he raised his arm to take Martha's with the intention of thanking her he halted and winced.

"What was that?"

"Wrist hurts," he complained.

"Are you in pain anywhere else?" Martha asked him.

"Yeah."

"Okay," Martha caressed his head. "Do you want to tell me where?"

"All over… I think… I think it's… all over."

"Is there anywhere that hurts more than everything else?" Martha asked him patiently. It was only after they started to reduce the medication further that they would start to get more of their Doctor back, but she was happy with how he was doing, even if his eyes were sliding closed without him answering her question. She wanted to avoid giving him too much pain relief because she needed to know if there were any complications as they arose and pain was often the first indication. "Doctor?" She got his attention again. "Does anything hurt more than the rest?"

"My chest…" he offered and went to touch it. "And… my wrist…" he went to touch it with his other hand. "Both… wrists?" he persevered for a moment and had a look at his wrist. It was not bandaged or supported but he could see it was looking swollen and there was very dark bruising mottling all over the inside of his wrist. It spread right up into the back of his hand and part way along his forearm. He didn't comment on it. It looked seriously injured but if it was then they'd not just have left it. He looked at his other wrist. It looked even worse. He then looked down at the dressing that covered the ten inch line of staples along his chest and bruising that spread across his right side, visible between all the electrodes stuck to his skin. They had shaved his chest hair off. It took him a few moments longer to make a deduction about what he was seeing as he put the pieces of evidence together, but then he just sighed. "Oh," he commented sleepily.

"Yeah, oh," Martha agreed with him. It was all he had to say on the matter as his eyes closed and remained that way. Martha didn't disturb him again, she caressed his head lightly and let him dript back into a peaceful sleep. Once he was asleep she reduced the rate of the sedative he was receiving and she increased the level of pain relief. Ideally she wanted him to be able to stay awake for a while without having to battle to stay awake, but it was going to be a difficult balance to find and as he continued to recover it would shift and the sedative would be less effective.


	17. Chapter 17

Martha went out into the corridor where Donna and Jack were waiting and hoping that they would be able to go in and see the Doctor awake. "He did wake up for a short period of a couple of minutes," Martha told them. "He has had a drink and he's gone straight back to sleep. I've increased his analgesia as he was in some discomfort and I have reduced the sedation further because he was drowsy and struggling to keep his eyes open. We may have to make further adjustments over the days to come, but the positive thing is that he has been awake and he is moving in the right direction."

"Was he talking?" Donna checked.

"He wasn't his usual chatty self, but I fear it may be a while before we see that from him. He responded to questions with coherent answers that made sense. At this stage after such a serious event that is quite a significant achievement. We would be hoping for that and likely getting much less in a human patient who has been through what he has. We will be keeping him in intensive care for the time being which means he always has a member of staff sitting in with him," Martha advised.

"Does he know what has happened?" Jack checked. He didn't want to catch him awake and let anything slip to him that he shouldn't.

"His wrists were causing him a lot of pain and he looked at the bruising and the dressing on his surgical incision and came to his own conclusion," Martha commented but nodded to Jack.

"What did he have to say about it?" Jack asked curiously.

"Oh."

"Is that it?" Jack checked.

"Yeah."

"Poor guy must still be so knackered," Donna sighed.

"He is and he's on heavy medication. Whether he remembers the conversation or not will remain to be seen. We are going to have to be pretty patient with him as one of the drugs he is receiving to help keep him calm has an amnesiac affect. It is very closely linked to a collection of drugs illicitly used as date rape drugs."

"Don't fight and don't remember?" Jack checked.

"Yeah, in this case, that is what we want from him until he is capable of dealing with any stress. I don't know if it will work the same way but we have to be patient and understanding. If he forgets a conversation one minute to the next then it is the drugs he is on and what I don't want is for him to get worried or anxious about that."

"How long is he going to be on the drugs?"

"As he improves we will reduce their level accordingly, so a lot of it depends solely on how he improves. All of our treatment of him now will be based largely on how he responds to it. The next couple of days, weeks, maybe even months are going to be based very much on how he is doing and what he has to offer in the way of his own expertise on what we should be doing. At the moment we are not in a position to have any particularly coherent conversations with him about anything never mind cardiac disease in Time Lords. I just need you to bear that in mind when you interact with him. I don't think he is actually going to care much, but it is important we don't upset him and his sense of pride and ego as it is if he thinks he is forgetting things then he may be embarrassed or stressed by it and we raise it to him as an issue. That does not mean he can't be aware, it just means we shouldn't be doing anything that can be misconstrued as mocking him if he forgets tomorrow what we discussed today," Martha warned.

"We wouldn't," Donna offered positively. Martha glanced at Jack and he nodded. He possibly would, but if he was being warned off by Martha then he definitely wouldn't. He just wanted things to be back to normal as quickly as they could be. They were going to have to find a line between being overly protective of him which he would hate and being too blasé about what he was going through and causing him offense.

Jack and Donna were allowed back into the room with the Doctor. He was sleeping peacefully, but at least they now knew he had been awake and Martha had not said anything of concern. She had to be fairly happy with how he was doing as she had not called any of the doctors or nurses actually treating him to make major adjustments to his treatment regime.

They were all still in the room with him a few hours later when it seemed like he was going to wake up again. Martha did not chase them out this time, but she did warn them to be quiet and remain out of his line of sight to begin with. She did not want him to be swamped despite their best efforts to comfort him.

"Hey," Martha rubbed his forearm as he woke. "Hello again."

"Hi," he greeted. His voice was hoarse and quiet but it had not taken him as long to fight the fog.

"Have a sip of water, Doctor," Martha encouraged and handed him the beaker though she did not let go of it. She didn't want to find he was so weakened and exhausted that he couldn't hold it and ended up pouring it down his front. She guided the straw to his mouth and he took a long drink of the cool liquid.

"Thanks."

"How are you feeling now?" Martha asked him. He seemed to think about it slightly too long and she guessed there was a lot to process with such a general question. She broke it down for him. "Are you in any pain?" she checked with him.

"Some."

"I can increase your analgesia a bit more if it would make you more comfortable?" Martha offered. "Would you like me to do that, Doctor?"

"Um, yes, please…" he offered and then frowned. "Sorry… I'm fuzzy."

"Yeah, I know, that is our fault," Martha told him. "Don't apologise, you just need to bear with us for a bit. We are giving you a lot of medication at the moment and it will make you feel pretty strange. Fuzzy is as good a word for it as any," she offered.

"Why?"

"Well, because you've been very poorly," Martha told him. "And, you need to have a chance to start to get better, so we don't want you doing too much or thinking too much or worrying too much. We just need you to relax and be nice and peaceful and to sleep when you need to in order to be feeling much better as you recover."

"Is it the virus?" he asked puzzled by what had happened. He sounded quite removed from the question as if they were listening to a raspy recording rather than the Doctor engaging in conversation. Ordinarily he'd be so animated it was hard to keep up with him.

"It is due to the damage caused by the virus," Martha confirmed. "We can talk about it all later, okay?" Martha asked. It was the moment of truth. Was he going to insist they told him everything and argue for information, or, was he going to accept the delay without question? Although they did need him to accept the delay, they all secretly hoped that he would argue.

"Can I have a cup of tea?"

"Are you going to stay awake to drink it?" Martha asked him.

"It depends on how quickly it is made."

"I suppose it does," Martha agreed with a smile.

"I'll go and get him one," Jack offered. Martha couldn't go because of her crutches.

"That was Jack," the Doctor acknowledged quietly.

"Yeah, Donna is here too," Martha confirmed and gestured for Donna to come over. She went over to his bedside.

"Hello Spaceman." Donna leant down and kissed him on the forehead.

"Blimey, I must be sick," the Doctor suggested. "I've not been hit."

"I'm saving them all up until you're better," Donna warned him. She caressed his head. "You've got loads of them coming." He pulled a bit of a face and then sighed. "Just get better, okay, and then I may decide to forget them all."

Jack came in for a cup of tea for the Doctor. It was in a plastic beaker with a straw so he'd not have to sit up any further. He looked at it and whereas Jack was worried he'd refuse it, the Doctor seem to care too much. It was the medication but that did not mean he was going to totally forget it all. He sipped the tea through the straw, it had not been made with truly boiling water. They either didn't trust Jack to be able to carry or him to be able to drink properly hot tea.

"Now you are all back here," the Doctor commented. "You can tell me what happened."

"I would rather wait a while, Doctor."

"Why?"

"Well, for one the medication I am giving you has a side effect that will make you forget," Martha told him. "And, I don't want to have to explain everything several times to you. It will make you forget but you might remember disjointed aspects that could get confusing so I want to wait until you can remember it all in one go," Martha told him.

"That is not a good excuse," the Doctor told her. "How will you know it makes me forget if you don't tell me something to remember," he tried to challenge her.

"Well, what about this?" Martha suggested. "Tish's birthday is 21st April."

"Why do I need to know what Tish's birthday is?"

"So you can get her a card, Dumbo."

"I don't even know when my own birthday is," the Doctor complained.

"Well, you don't need to know when Tish's birthday is either, but if you can recall it next time you are awake then I will go through all of the medical stuff with you," Martha advised him. "Do you remember what you found out the last time you were awake? When you said oh? What was your oh?"

"Oh? I don't know what you mean? What oh?" the Doctor asked. It was clear to Martha that he did have some recollection of it as his hand migrated to the dressing in the middle of his chest and he looked down on it again. It was a long thin dressing a foot long and it stretched down the middle of his chest over his sternum. "The virus damaged my hearts," the Doctor advised.

"Yes, it did," Martha agreed.

"Oh." He sighed.

"Finish you tea Spaceman, and as long as you can remember Tish's birthday Martha will tell you all about it next time," Donna told him. "I can see that all you want to do right now is have your tea and go back to sleep, you don't want to be talking about complicated medical things anyway do you?"

"No," the Doctor admitted. "What is Tish's birthday again?"

"21st April."

"Okay," the Doctor confirmed. He'd remember that and then they'd have to tell him what happened. For the meantime, he didn't even bother about finishing his tea. He let exhaustion wash over him and take him back off to sleep.

He slept for the rest of the day. He only woke briefly after midnight long enough to ask for a drink and to complain that he was feeling very dizzy and that he didn't like it. Martha had returned to sleeping in a cot on site and she was reluctantly woken because of the Doctor's complaint. By the time she had gotten to him he was sound asleep again.

Martha checked him over as he slept. There was no indication why he might have felt particularly dizzy. There had been no recorded change in the pattern of his hearts and his blood oxygen levels remained even and high. She was satisfied he remained stable, he was just still unwell. The nurse who woke her apologised for doing so when it appeared there had been no reason for it. Martha insisted that she had done the best thing possible and if he woke and complained that he had a sore toe then she wanted to be woken. She hoped that he would sleep until morning and then they would reduce his sedation a jot again, bringing it down step by step to make sure he was strong enough when they did.


	18. Chapter 18

When Martha got up in the morning and returned to his bedside he had remained asleep for the rest of the night. He was stable and appeared comfortable so she gave the instruction for his sedation to be reduced a little bit more.

Donna had gone home, but it would not be long until she came back in. Jack had not returned to Cardiff but he had gone wandering while the Time Lord slept. She knew he was stressed and worried. Martha didn't really want to think about what Jack might be getting up to or how he was relieving the stress. Just off base there were a lot of bars and clubs frequented by a lot of soldiers. She would not put it past Jack to meet one of two or possibly three or four of them.

They had all gathered around his bed by the time the Doctor began to wake. With his sedation reduced they might have a better change to have a longer conversation with him, but it was also likely that he'd be more persistent and less easily persuaded to accept being put off the reasons why he was so sick.

"Morning, Doc." Jack was the one sitting by his bedside when he woke. They didn't all crowd around him. Jack was holding his hand and the Doctor glanced down at it. Jack knew he'd be devastated if the Doctor pulled away from it because of how wrong he felt, it seemed he was hesitating for a moment, but then he curled his fingers around Jack's broad hand a little tighter. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Thirsty, can I have something to drink?"

"Course," Jack confirmed. "Do you want tea, water, juice, or milk?"

"Just water, thanks," the Doctor responded. His voice remained cracked and weak. Jack held the water and straw so he could drink deeply from it. He drained the cup and Jack poured him another which he drank down too.

"That is enough for now," Martha interjected before Jack poured the Doctor a third cup.

"I'm thirsty," the Doctor complained.

"You are getting enough fluid, Doctor, it is being given to you intravenously," Martha told him. "But, what about trying to have something light to eat? You won't be thirsty, but you may well be feeling hungry? What about if you try a bit of banana or something?" Martha suggested. Donna went out to go and get him on. "Would you like to try to sit up a bit more? You have slipped down the bed a little while you were asleep."

Martha and Jack helped him to sit forward so his pillows could be rescued and they brought the head of his bed up a little more. "Rest back now, Doctor," Martha instructed. "How does that feel?"

"Okay, I think," the Doctor accepted. He kept hold of Martha's hand. "What's happened?" he asked her sincerely and with the vaguest hints of worry creeping past the reduced sedation into his tone. "What is going on? Why do I feel so awful?" he checked. He looked down at his chest. "What happened to me?"

"What is Tish's birthday?" Jack asked him.

"What has that got to do with anything?" the Doctor checked. "Why would I even know what Tish's birthday is? That is Martha's sister. I don't know when her birthday is, don't ask me, ask Martha."

"Yesterday you asked what happened and we told you what Tish's birthday is, and, we decided together that if you are well enough to remember what her birthday is today that we would tell you everything that happened."

"No you didn't," the Doctor argued with Jack.

"We did, Doctor, but, I actually don't think it was as far as we intended it to be," Martha offered. "So, don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried, I don't feel worried, I don't feel anything," the Doctor complained.

"Except fuzzy?" Martha asked him.

"Yeah, fuzzy, why am I fuzzy?"

"I am giving you ketamine at the moment and that can make you forget things. It is nothing to worry about, and the added advantage is that you're less likely to worry because of the ketamine, but if you are concerned you don't need to be as it is just the drugs. I am hoping that when we can reduce them more you will be feeling better, but they are important for you to carry on having now. We are reducing them a little bit every few hours. If you remain calm and comfortable this afternoon and manage to have something to eat then I will reduce them again. We will carry on bringing the level down gradually."

"I want to know what happened to me."

"I know," Martha commented. "And, I am going to tell you. If you have forgotten alter on then I will just tell you again, but I don't want you to remember snippets and get worried. If you think you remember something that is worrying you then you need to talk to me about it straight away, not try to work it out yourself because the drugs will make that hard for you to do and it will wear you out and I don't want you to get too tired, okay?"

"I suppose, I am quite tired now," the Doctor admitted. "But, if you are giving me ketamine it is not a surprise."

"I am not only giving you ketamine. You are getting a whole host of Time Lord friendly medications at the moment. They are to keep you feeling calm and peaceful."

"I think they are working. I'm not getting annoyed with you for not telling me what has happened."

"Good," Martha offered. "So, how about we reverse it and you tell me what you remember from the past fortnight?"

"I was shopping in Kingston with Donna for her mother's birthday present. I met some Bylaxians there and contracted a Bylaxian virus that made me pretty sick. I should be able to beat off viruses though. I didn't this one and it has caused me damage."

"Yeah, it has. It caused you a lot of damage Doctor. Especially to your lungs and to your hearts," Martha told him. "Three days ago we found out that the damage that had been done to your right heart was significant enough for you to have a stress induced right sided heart attack," Martha explained. She didn't' bother sing the medical language she knew the Doctor understood because she didn't want him entering a medical frame of mind. If she kept it basic she hoped he'd just accept it for now. "You had scar tissue on both of your hearts but most significantly to the right. Your right heart couldn't cope and you had a heart attack which put additional stress on your left heart making you very ill, so the decision was made to intervene. During a very successful operation our cardiologist has removed the plaques caused by the scar tissue and has opened up the blood vessels again and both your hearts have a good blood flow to and through them. They are both beating well at the moment, but, we are giving you drugs to stop you getting too excited about anything as your right heart still has some healing to do. As your hearts continue to recover you will get stronger and we will continue to reduce the sedation. All you need to know right now is that you are doing well and are on the road to recovery, okay?"

"It's not okay, not really," the Doctor stated. "I should be very worried if I've had a heart attack."

"We can't afford for you to get very worried as it would put a strain on your hearts that is why we are giving you the drugs. If you continue to improve over the next few days or so then you will be able to come off the sedation and things will seem clearer to you."

"Do you know how I contracted the virus in the first place?" the Doctor asked.

"Why do you ask that?"

"It doesn't feel right. I don't think it has. I think you have been less than up front with it. I should not have got so ill from a virus. There are only a few viruses that only affect Time Lords and not humans, most of them attack the hearts, but I'd not ordinarily get beaten by a virus. I've got a strong feeling that there is something else to do with the Bylaxians."

"There is something else," Martha told him. "And you have every right to be very angry and upset about it. We all are on your behalf, Doctor, but if you show any signs of stress when I tell you I will be forced to increase your sedation again, okay?"

"Okay?" the Doctor was more puzzled than curious.

"The virus that you had was the same strain as the virus that is causing a pandemic on Bylax," Martha explained to him. "The Bylaxians that you saw were infected, but you did not catch it from them. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying and many more are left with significant damage from the virus on Bylax and they aren't winning the battle either biologically or medically," Martha gave him a brief background. "They estimate that the virus will wipe out over half of the planetary population and leave a large proportion of the rest infertile and it could essentially wipe out the Bylaxian race. It is highly virulent and infectious, but it only affects species with a binary cardiac system."

"It sounds like a plague," Donna commented.

"Pandemic events happen from time to time, the human race has had a few, plague, influenza, and they generally don't wipe out the whole population. The virus ends up mutating or simply petering out," he reassured Donna in case she was worried that the Bylaxians became extinct. She didn't seem very worried about it. He turned back to Martha. "So, I did catch it from them?"

"Not exactly," Martha commented. "You were given it by them." The Doctor looked puzzled for a moment. "Deliberately," Martha clarified. "They gave you massive doses of pure virus over a sustained period in order to overwhelm your immune system. It made you very sick indeed. We almost lost you on more than one occasion," Martha told him.

"My immune response would create antibodies far more successfully than theirs," the Doctor advised. "If I'd just breathed it in from meeting them it would have had no effect. I knew it had to be more than that. Were they trying to kill me with it?"

"No, they weren't trying to kill you but they knew that they were going to kill you," Martha told him. "And that was of no consequence, but their primary purpose was not to end your life. Not before they achieved what they wanted to achieve by giving you the virus. They were turning you into a biological antibody factory," Martha told him. "They had already started to harvest some of them from you and had given them to one of the scientists who was symptomatic for the virus."

"Did it work?" the Doctor asked.

"There is no way of quantifying whether it did or not."

"You're lucky we found you when he did, Doc. You weren't going to last much longer. The Bylaxians that did it to you are in custody. They will be charged by UNIT over the next couple of weeks," Jack advised.

"Why haven't they been charged yet? Are they disputing their involvement or something?"

"No, they were caught red handed and have not denied anything. It is UNIT that has not yet brought the charges though they have been charged with incursions into Earth territories in order to carry on holding them. They are waiting to see what the initial charges with regards their attack on you are going to be."

"Waiting to see if it is murder or just attempted murder?" the Doctor asked far too casually.

"Bluntly?" Martha looked at them. "Yes, that has been a consideration."

"Attempted," the Doctor advised firmly.

"Good," Martha offered and smiled. "Now, are you going to have something to eat? Donna brought you a banana?"

"Maybe later," the Doctor offered and simply went back to sleep.


	19. Chapter 19

Over the next three days they had the same conversation several times, but each time the Doctor remembered more detail and asked more specific questions. By the end of the week he knew what had been done to him and even if he was not being sedated anymore he appeared to be quite pragmatic about it. He had even had a conversation with Jack with regards the ethics of the actions the Bylaxians took. If they had been in their shoes would they have done the same? Of course they agreed with each other that of course they would not have done so, but, to sacrifice one life to save hundreds of thousands?

They both acknowledged if only to themselves they had made similar choices and potentially would again. That did not mean they would ever condone what had been done to the Doctor, it just meant that they both had to tread carefully in the face of outright condemnation and would not shout too loudly from their moral high ground on that regard. Jack was not happy to let it pass though, if UNIT did not call them to an appropriate justice then he would make them pay.

It was a week before the Doctor ventured back downstairs onto the terrace with Martha and Donna. He was in a wheelchair and the length of time it was taking for him to recover was evident. Martha was now out of a cast and wearing a walking boot. It was now on though and she was still using crutches only putting partial weight on her leg, but it was a lot more progress towards a full recovery than the Doctor had made as he sat in a wheelchair on a drip and with an oxygen line running to his nose as he waited for Donna to fetch their drinks.

Martha was on hand this time to fend off any well-intentioned but disastrous questions or comments from injured Servicemen, but no one came and talked to them. The Doctor enjoyed the drink in the fresh air and then they took him around the grounds which were designed for recuperating soldiers to spend time in to relax. They were extensive and ornamental including many seating areas and places just to stop. The Doctor was grateful for that. There was plenty to look at and he wasn't rushed back to bed. He was however exhausted by the time he did get back to bed an hour and a half later. He ended up sleeping through until the following morning.

"Come on then, Doctor," Martha instructed a couple of days later. She didn't come in with a wheelchair for him, but a nurse was carrying a frame for him.

"What is that?" the Doctor asked disdainfully.

"It is time for your shower," Martha instructed. "And, today, you are making your own way to the bathroom. We will take it slow and May is going to assist you, but we need to get you u on your feet again or those hearts of yours will think the only thing they have to cope with is sitting around all day and we both know that isn't right don't we?"

The Doctor could manage the couple of steps from the bed to the chair beside it where he was currently sitting and he could get up from that and into a wheelchair. He could do each of the actions in reverse and in various combinations, but that was the limit and he always had oxygen on hand if he needed it though it ran beside his bed rather than it being permanently attached to his face. He wasn't permanently attached to anything anymore. He was only getting oral medications and he was being asked to drink and eat regularly and by the clock which was beginning to get quite annoying, but he was doing better, so, why did they think he was going to need a frame? Besides, it was his hearts that were the problem not his legs, even if he had got horrendous cramps a few times with the circulatory aspect of ineffective blood flow.

He'd learned not to argue too much though, Martha and the other medics took heart attacks and recovery from them very seriously even if he did have two of them. He stood up from the chair without the frame and took a couple of slow steps toward it, maybe he wasn't running a marathon but he was up and the bathroom where he showered was only four doors down the hallway.

"Yes, you do have to," Martha told him before he had even asked the question. The Doctor didn't say anything in response but he scowled slightly at the medic. He wished she'd not broken her ankle. Not least because it was painful for her and he did not want Martha to be in pain even if he had never heard her complain about it and Donna had told him exactly how hard Martha had worked to save his life and how she'd not even missed a beat when she'd broken her ankle halfway through his rescue. He also wished that she'd not broken her ankle because then it would be her positioned behind him wanting to catch him if he fell and not a nurse he didn't know to trust.

It wasn't an issue until he got to the main corridor. He took the frame with him, but he carried it. He was not going to need to use it. When he got out of the bedroom he realised he may have been a bit ambitious and gone a bit too quickly. Fifteen steps in quick succession left him feeling a little dizzied for a moment and he was forced not only to put the frame down but to lean on it, though just for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Martha checked with him.

"Fine, just got a bit dizzy," he admitted. He closed his eyes for a moment taking a deep breath to try and centre himself before he continued on to the bathroom. He was relieved to be able to sit down again when he got there.

Martha was gracious enough just to let him get showered without supervision. He had shown he was able to dress and undress without assistance now. He knew that she was going to be just on the other side of the door, more so as he'd admitted having a very brief dizzy spell on walking down. He was recovering all the time. It was fine.

He undressed in the area leading into the shower and then went into the actual cubicle. He folded the shower seat in there down but instead of turning and sitting on it he put his UNIT issue toiletries on it. He smelt like a soldier, but he wasn't going to ask them to get his toiletries out of the TARDIS. That would be too much when they had done so much for him already.

He put the water on to a medium heat. He had already learned that came through just right. He waited a few moments for the water to mix correctly and then he stepped into the refreshing spray. He let the water wash over him, but when he closed his eyes and turned his face to the spray he felt a little disorientated as the dizziness teased him. He'd not say he was dizzy, but it caused him to feel unbalanced and he reached out for the rail at the side of the shower as he felt himself stagger. He knocked the shampoo off the shower seat and it fell into the bottom. He'd taken the cap off ready to use it and it spilled into the bottom of the shower. As he bent down to retrieve it the dizziness did hit him full on.

He could feel that his breathing was a bit harsher with exertion and his hearts may have been beating a little faster. He felt like he had jogged for a mile, nothing too strenuous, they weren't going run for your life fast, but they had increased. He was acutely aware of his body's over reaction to far too little in the way of exercise. A further wave of dizziness swept over him. This one was like a tsunami. He grabbed at the side of the shower, but his feet slid in the foaming shampoo in the base and he fell. He cried out as he landed squarely on his elbow and it jarred up his arm driving his weight through it as he rocked backward. It felt like his shoulder had exploded.

Martha was just outside the bathroom and she heard a clatter and the Doctor yell. She went to the door and knocked. "Are you okay in there?" she didn't want to just bust in on him if all he had done was drop the shower head and soak everything (again).

"Martha?" the Doctor called back out to her. It was all she needed to know he wasn't okay. She opened the door and went in to find a bundle of naked Time Lord on the bottom of a foam filled shower. The water was still running. He was looking very white and he was short of breath. She could see that he had not been sitting on the shower chair as there remained some toiletries on it. He'd been using it as a shelf.

Martha went into the shower. She was able to bear most of her weight on her ankle within the boot now so she stood in there and turned the water off. She grabbed a towel and put it over the Doctor to maintain some of his dignity though she guessed that it had long since evaporated. That didn't mean she would just damage it more.

"Come and sit up straight, Doctor, you will find it easier," Martha commented. It constricted his chest if he curled up. She took his arm to help him rise so he could sit back against the shower wall and get his breath back. She had a stethoscope permanently on hand and as she tried to ease him up with one arm she was reaching for that with the other.

"Aaargh, no?!" the Doctor hollered as he tried to sit. Pain ripped through his shoulder. It was the arm under him and when he moved it felt like it was being twisted off. He groaned and grimaced. Martha moved to kneel in the shower.

"What is causing you pain?" she asked him. She hoped he'd not damaged his ribs or his sternum that had been cut through the surgery. They had healed well but were not totally healed. The surgical scar had the staples removed from it and was healed but it was still scabby at the bottom end and they were keeping an eye on it. She hoped he'd not knocked that either.

"Shoulder," the Doctor gasped. "Martha, it hurts?" he complained and then groaned. "Ow God?" He knew he'd had a sling on when he first woke up and he was sure he'd probably been told why but that was one thing he couldn't really remember. Now he was in agony. It was a brutal pain that took his breath and made his hearts beat faster and the vague dizziness was rolling over him as a result.

"We suspect that your shoulder had been dislocated at some point," Martha told the Doctor. "I hope that you're not put it back out again. Let me just have a look?" She carefully felt around him to his shoulder and the arm that he was laying on. The Doctor grunted as she found the joint. "I'm sorry, Doctor. You're laid on your arm at the moment. Can you bring it forward?"

"I can't move," the Doctor groaned.

"Yes you can, slowly come this way so you're on your back," Martha suggested. "I will give you a hand. Take long deep breaths in and on the count of three we can just ease over so you're on your back," Martha instructed. The Doctor tensed as Martha counted him down. When he moved off his shoulder he almost blacked out with the pain that struck him. Martha examined his shoulder. "Close your eyes, Doctor," Martha instructed.

"Why?"

"Don't ask why, just do what you're told," Martha commented. "We need you to calm down a bit, so close your eyes and take a long deep breath. Remember to breathe right down into your abdomen. Take a breath in and hold it for a moment and then let it out slowly. We don't want you getting any more short of breath or I will be telling them to put you back on oxygen," Martha warned him.

"Martha?" the Doctor moaned when he felt her take his wrist in one hand. She wasn't taking his pulse with the meaty grip she had around his arm.

"Keep on breathing," Martha told him as she eased her other hand under his elbow. "Breathe in, long and slow," she instructed. As she did she lifted his elbow very slowly upward. He groaned. As she used her hand on his wrist to rotate his arm round the Doctor roared until it all just gave and his shoulder clunked. "There you go," Martha folded his arm over his chest. "Sit up against the wall now and calm down a bit," Martha helped him up so he was sitting against the wall.

"Thank you," the Doctor sighed. He left his arm across his chest. He looked down on the red line of scar along his sternum. His shoulder ached but the pain had gone so he tentatively tried to shrug it.

"I'd not do that just yet in case it decides to pop out again," Martha warned. "Can I trust you to sit still for a moment?" she asked him.

"Yeah."

"Okay, good, just sit there and relax."

The Doctor didn't really have much choice but to sit and wait for Martha to return. He wasn't sure how he would get back up without using both arms to haul himself and he couldn't do that. When she did return she had a nurse with her and a wheelchair. Martha went back in the shower with a shoulder sling. The Doctor didn't argue when she slid it over his arm. It would hold it still until he could get it scanned. Martha didn't think there was anything broken so she was going straight for MRI to view the soft tissues.

The Doctor had no room to be shy when he was sitting naked in the bottom of a shampoo foam filled shower. Martha hosed him down a little and then helped him up onto the seat so he could dry off. He got into his tracksuit trousers again, not bothering with the T-shirt as he was wheeled out and to the treatment suite rather than back to his room. He needed to get his shoulder scanned and checked. The only reason why Martha had elected to put it straight back before hand was due to the level of pain he was in and the affect that had on his stress levels.

The scanner was busy when they arrived so he had to sit in a waiting room with Martha while they waited for it to become free. It was a soldier who had popped his knee playing rugby so the scans were likely to take some time.

"Do you need some pain relief?" Martha asked the Doctor as she sat close to him.

"It's not too bad now it is back in."

"We may have to move your arm a little in order to take adequate scans. I can get you something now while we wait and it will have worked by then and the scans will be easier."

"I will be guided by you," the Doctor commented.

"Well, that will be a first," Martha teased. She went and got him some oral pain relief he could take. She had them in her pocket so she was okay to use her crutches as she had to go to a pharmacy point to draw them out. Then she got him a cup of water to take them from the dispenser in the room walking with a single crutch.

When the scanner was free Martha got him to lie on his back on the bench. They took images of his shoulder with his arm in the sling but she couldn't see much on the scans as they came up on the screen. She took the sling off and got him to raise his arm to the side. She helped him and he was entirely grateful for the pain relief then. It was only for the moment of the scan and then he could put it back across his chest and Martha secured it in the sling. He relaxed into the sling.

He sat back in the wheelchair in the waiting room and waited for Martha to come and tell him how his shoulder was looking. She showed him the scans. There was a moderate looking tear to one of the ligaments holding his shoulder at the front. It would heal on its own but he'd have to be careful until it did. Martha added a second strap to the sling so he couldn't move his arm at all. She then helped him put his T-shirt back on over the top.

He felt a little pathetic sitting in a wheelchair in a loose pair of grey jersey trousers and a white UNIT T-shirt over his strapped arm. His hair was unstyled from the shower but was mostly dry now so a fluffy mess. His feet were bare on the footplates of the wheelchair and there was a scattering of hair on them. He looked pale and tired but when Martha crouched down in front of him to make sure he was okay he gave her a weak smile.

"As your doctor I should probably suggest we get you straight back to bed to rest," Martha told him. "But," she stated when he pulled a face. "I'm not technically your doctor at the moment, so, as your friend what about a short sojourn out onto the terrace to get some fresh air? Jack isn't due in until later and I think Donna has got to do something with her grandfather this morning so isn't going to be here until after lunch. I have got nothing on this morning," Martha assured him. "We can go outside and have banana milkshakes."

"That sounds nice," he accepted. Martha caressed his head and then dropped a kiss onto his crown in an unusual show of affection.

"What was that for?"

"I'm just sorry," Martha told him.

"What for?"

"Just because of all of this," Martha commented. "And now your shoulder is just something else for you to deal with."

"It's okay."

"Is it?" Martha asked him. "You know you're not on any sedation any more. If you want to get upset or angry about any of this then it is allowed now. I would be angry. I am angry, I'm angry with the Bylaxians for what they have done to you. They have taken you at a time when you were healthy and fit and they have turned you into a wreck," Martha told him. "It is not fair."

"I'm recovering," the Doctor advised. "It is slow while things get in order, but once my hearts are recovered enough to support regenerative based healing it will be much quicker. I will quickly get to the good level of fitness again and I should be dead. You rescued me and you have all saved me, but you especially Martha, and while you're injured? I could never have asked for more. I'm confident things will work out it will just take time, and my shoulder is one more thing now and it does hurt."

"I can get you some stronger pain relief?"

"No, I think I want it to hurt for a bit," the Doctor offered. Martha looked at him curiously. "I can pretend that I'm stuck here lie this because I've wrecked my shoulder rather than because I can't shower standing up," he commented.

"Oh, Doctor," Martha sighed. "It will be okay."

"I know."

"Aren't you angry with them for what they did to you?"

"Yes, but, I know that it is hard to see but I can also understand why they did it. I'm not sure it makes it easier or worse to deal with. I was shopping with Donna and the next thing I am truly aware of is being here unable to function properly. If they had asked me to help then I would have helped them and would not now be in this state. That they have not only rendered me incapable but they have also taken my opportunity to help away from me is what makes me angry. It is pointless, but is also a show of the desperation felt by the Bylaxians. They are generally passive and not violent and do not stray far from their own systems. It must have taken them time, effort, and a lot of planning to come and find me."

"And it was all for nothing," Martha commented. "Their initial hearing is being held next week."

"Decided not to charge them with murder now then?" the Doctor checked.

"Yeah," Martha nodded. "Do you want to be there to give evidence?"

"Not if I can avoid it."

"You can avoid it," Martha assured him. "I will get you a medical pass. It would certainly be justified and I would be worried about you going face to face with them in court before you're a good deal fitter than you are now."

"Are you going to give evidence?"

"Yes, I'm giving the medical evidence," Martha confirmed. "It is Donna they are going to have to watch out for."

"I can imagine," the Doctor offered and smiled. "They'll be wanting someone to throw away the key so she can't get in!" he commented and then laughed. Martha smiled. It was good to hear him laugh, even if it did leave him wheezing with loss of breath from the effort.


	20. Chapter 20

Two weeks later the Doctor was definitely on a more rapid road to recovery. He was up on his feet and had even been permitted his suit back. He didn't wear the jacket as his shoulder was no supported with a basic foam collar and cuff so he could use his arm or let it relax and take the weight off it as he needed. He could go a few hours without much difficulty and on several occasions now he had been in the UNIT gymnasium with various other recuperating patients. He had run for a full two minutes hooked up to heart monitors and though it had exhausted him his issue was with strength and stamina. His hearts had coped with the brief period of added exertion. He was finally starting to bounce back.

The initial hearing had been heard and the Bylaxians were have a second hearing that morning. It would determine if they were going to trial and what was the likely result if they did. Only short statements were being made at this hearing prior to the full trial if it was decided that they would be put on trial. No one had any doubt that there would be a trial for what they had done to the Doctor. The Doctor had been invited to sit in and listen if he didn't want to give evidence, but he didn't much care for trials or hearings. Not when he'd been on the receiving end of so many of them. He was waiting down in the gardens, close to a vender where he could get a reasonable cup of tea for news.

It was just after midday when Jack, Donna, and Martha came to find him. IT had taken longer than expected. Donna and Jack both looked pleased as they came up to the gardens to meet him.

"They are being charged with kidnap, false imprisonment, bringing a lethal substance into Earth space without proper documentation, carrying out illegal experimentation, and with your attempted murder," Donna listed the charges that had been brought against the Bylaxians and feeling happy with that decision.

"They are going to get sentences of a minimum of 5 years and up to a total life sentence if they are found guilty," Jack advised the Time Lord.

"They are not going to get away with it," Donna continued. "Coljai has admitted all that they did."

"He's admitted it?" the Doctor checked.

"Yeah, he has," Jack confirmed. "His own statements are very damning so they don't think the case will take long to hear at all."

"They are not going to get away with it," Donna repeated.

"No, they aren't," the Doctor agreed. He thought he would have felt more pleased by that but he didn't, he just felt saddened. "Sorry, would you excuse me?" the Doctor got up and walked off through the gardens.

"Doctor?" Jack was puzzled by his exit.

"Let him go, Jack, he needs to think this through," Martha offered. She had studied the Time Lord rather than taken part in the actual conversation. "He won't go too far."

"I hope not."

The Doctor went to the TARDIS. It had been moved into a secure area and he had been granted access to his ship by Martha. The TARDIS was not going to take him off anywhere until he was fully fit to leave and until he had been discharged. When Martha said he could go off then he was going to be allowed to go off, but not until then. It was a good place just to go and think. His ship always made things feel less confusing.

He went in and he walked around the console. He adjusted a couple of the dials so she was more comfortable. She was old and she tended to drift away from nominal settings if she was left inactive for too long. Same as he did. They both had to keep moving. He sat on the jump seats with his feet up on the edge of the console. She didn't rebuke him for it in amicable argument about shoes on her surfaces. She was just glad to have him back and find him much improved each time he managed to get away to come and see her.

She knew it would not be long until she had her pilot back full time and she let him go back to his human hospital each time as he did as he came back better the next time. He was not happy now though. She could sense his thoughts were in turmoil. For several long minutes the Doctor sat up on the seats deep in thought as he weighed it all up.

A new determination swept over him. He got up and marched out of the TARDIS and toward the security building. He knew they had cells there, and he knew that is where the Bylaxians were being held. By the time he got there he was breathing more heavily than he should be. There was a barely detectable wheeze to his inhalation. He knew it and Martha would have known it, but the security officer on the desk did not know it as he strode up to the desk with a confidence.

"Do you know who I am?" the Doctor asked him.

"Yes Sir, of course I do, Sir," the soldier got up and saluted him. For once the Doctor did not complain about it.

"You will take me to see the Bylaxian prisoners," the Doctor instructed.

"But, Sir, I…"

"Do I have to repeat myself, soldier?" the Doctor asked him.

"No Sir," the desk officer gulped. "This way." The Doctor was led into the holding cell areas. In the three cells at the end were three Bylaxians. They were behind Perspex screens. Two were sitting contemplatively. The third was curled up on the bench at the back of the cell. He was sleeping fitfully and appeared to be breathing shallowly. The Doctor knew how that felt. He looked at the names on the wall. Coljai was the one he had heard spoken of the most. He stood in front of the cell and turned to the solider.

"You may return to your post."

"Sir," the solider acknowledged and left the Doctor standing in front of the cell. He then turned his attention to the cell's occupant. "Coljai of Bylax?" the Doctor checked.

"It is I," Coljai commented and then went closer to the man in front of him. "Oh my word? Doctor? I was told you were now recovering well, but I did not know what to believe. Look at you?" Coljai went right up to the glass. "That is truly remarkable? You are recovered?"

"Not completely, not yet. I have Doctor Jones and her medical team to thank for their timely interventions," the Doctor advised him.

"Indeed. I am truly stunned to see you here, Doctor. When they told me you were recovering I believed them to be lies told to a prisoner, but you are."

"I am getting there. With one or two souvenirs," he opened his shirt to reveal the surgical scar he would now carry until his next regeneration.

"The virus settled very quickly into your respiratory and coronary systems," Coljai confirmed. "In our species the respiratory symptoms are mild at first and signal the disease moving into the second stage. I do not know if it was the pure virus or the amount we gave you that accelerated the affect and damage done to you or a difference in our species."

"There are many differences between Bylaxians and Time Lords," the Doctor advised. "I am not here to discuss them."

"No, I don't suppose you are. You are here to gloat at our incarceration? There is no need. It is deserved. A minimum of five years will see each of us into our graves."

"You are infected?" the Doctor checked. "I see the third man has some respiratory distress."

"Nimal, yes, he is the most seriously sick of us and the angriest at that. He cannot accept it is fated."

"Nor can you or you would not have infected me."

"Fated for myself. It is too late for me. I too have secondary symptoms. I carried hope for my daughter. She is but 12 years old. Her screening showed she was positive at her last birthday. I had hoped a chance for her that she might live a live and know the joy of carrying children of her own. It is not to be," Coljai advised. "I am sorry that we caused you so much suffering, Doctor," Coljai advised him. He sounded genuine. "I did so not only as a scientist instructed by my government, but as a father who is unlikely to live to see his daughter suffer but who knows it is coming for her regardless."

"And now you will die here and will not see her again."

"Yes," Coljai confirmed and bowed his head sorrowfully. "And that is a greater punishment than any your court could dole on us and it is deserved. I will seek opportunity to write to her, maybe there is a way to get word to her."

"I can see to that," the Doctor confirmed. "I can get word home for you."

"You are a father?" Coljai asked.

"I was."

"Was?"

"My children are long gone. In the Time War."

"That does not mean you stop being a father and carrying around that love you have?"

"No, it does not," the Doctor agreed.

"Then you are a father still."

"Yes I am," the Doctor accepted. "I have a question for you Coljai if I may?"

"Under the circumstances you may do as you wish with my companions and I. A question is the least that is deserved of us. I believed a severe beating at your hand at the very least."

"I'd get too out of breath to try that," the Doctor offered and smiled slightly as he shook his head. "I only have a question. When you came to find me, why didn't you just ask me to help you?"

"You would not help us willingly," Coljai stated and shook his head. "You are a Time Lord, Sir. Time Lords do not offer help, they only offer judgement."

The Doctor bowed his head slightly when he heard that, but he did not have a chance to respond to him as he heard the door to the custody suite open and the desk officer came in with Doctor Jones. The Doctor sighed and he looked to Coljai. "I need to go."

"I hope you continue to improve." Coljai told him sincerely.

"Thank you," the Doctor accepted then went back to where Martha was waiting for him.

"Are you okay? What did you come in here for?"

"I needed to ask him something."

"Did you get what you needed?" Martha asked sensitive to his mood.

"I think so, if not entirely what I expected."

"It would be easier if Coljai were a monster?" Martha asked him as she slid her arm through the Doctor's. He nodded. "You're sounding a bit wheezy," she told him with a medic's concern.

"I walked here from the TARDIS."

"That is right across the base."

"Yeah," the Doctor confirmed. "How did you know I was here?"

"The desk officer has an instruction to tell the base commander each and every time someone seeks authority to see the prisoners. The base commander then told me that was where you were. I think he was worried that we may have an intergalactic incident on our hands if you'd gone in and had it out with them. He clearly doesn't know you very well if he thinks you'd do that."

"No," the Doctor offered. "Neither do they," he sighed as he bowed his head. "I would have helped."


	21. Chapter 21

For the rest of the day the Doctor seemed distracted and subdued. Even when he was promised a date of discharge soon he did not seem too happy. Martha knew he was trying to rationalise what had been done to him. She did not accuse him of being moody or ask him to 'spit it out', she just let him. He'd not just been physically injured by Coljai and his colleagues, he had been wounded emotionally too. He'd been put in a position where sickness had not only risked his life but to some extent was still risking his future. He had to be allowed to figure out what he needed to do in order to come to terms with that.

The following morning Martha was surprised to find that when she went into work that the Doctor had already gone for a walk. He was no longer under constant supervision but he did have to abide by a treatment regime and he had left early and before he had eaten and before he had taken his morning medication. It was that which concerned Martha, it supported his hearts and his respiration. He needed to take it and he needed to take it before midday or he'd not be able to take the afternoon medications he needed that eliminated the night cramps.

He was still getting fairly substantial assistance from medications, and it was important that he carried on taking it, especially the drug that kept his hearts clear. He needed to be weaned off that a bit at a time, not bugger off out before breakfast without it. If he just stopped taking it then the withdrawal would be quite difficult to manage and could cause an arrhythmia which was essential what the drug assisted in preventing in his recovering right heart.

Martha hadn't have thought he would do something silly like go out without his drugs, but she also knew he'd had a hard day the day before. She was concerned that he had just gone without telling anyone when he was going or where he was going. His last check had been a night check at three in the morning. They had found he was gone at just after seven when they went to ensure he was awake for breakfast and medication.

The Doctor hadn't told anyone what he was planning to do because he didn't think anyone would understand. He hadn't gone far, but he had gone early. He wanted to get a head start and had been in the TARDIS since just after four in the morning. He wasn't on the flight deck thinking he was in the science lab. He had tied a bit of rubber tubing around the bicep of his slung shoulder to find a vein and had drawn a large blood sample.

He had then screened it using the TARDIS equipment. It was equipment that Bylax could never have gotten access to. By the time he should have been woken up for breakfast he had used blood sample in order to create an injectable cure for the virus using the antibodies from his own blood stream. He wasn't going to offer it as it stood though. He went through a further process of screening it for DNA fragments. He was not going to suddenly going to trust the Bylaxians with Time Lord DNA. It took him another hour and a half. In total he had created a cure within four and a half hours. If they had asked him he would have been able to do that. He would not now be breathing heavily and be slightly dizzy and nauseous. He needed to do one more thing and then he could set the TARDIS to create a sample of 5000 doses and a replication module so that they could make more of the cure easily.

He went onto the flight deck with the phial of the drug and he went over to the security building again. It took him longer to make the trek across the base than it had done the day before. He was quite surprised that the early exertion before and without the medications he took in the morning was having such a negative effect. He'd thought that he was managing and the drugs were just a failsafe and an over precaution. It seemed that they were not. He felt like the world was positively swirling around him by the time he got to the security building.

"I need to… go back into see the… Bylaxians," the Doctor told the desk officer. It was the same officer as the day before.

"Are you okay, Sir?"

"Yes, yes, fine… just ran across base… that is all," he lied. "Now, let me in… it is urgent, or I… would not have run… and I would appreciate it… if you did not tell base… command straight away?"

"Sir," the officer gave him access to the custody suite. He could not get into any of the cells anyway and if he was that knackered after running across the base then he wasn't going to be doing much to them even if he could. He did not see what harm there was and he had been advised to tell Dr Jones if he went back and not the base commander.

"Doctor?" Coljai went to the front of the cell when the Time Lord visited for the second time. "You do not look well," he had a genuine concern.

"Just a bit… short of breath… didn't take any medication… this morning."

"Why ever not? You need to return to your medical team for assistance, Sir," Coljai advised.

"Not yet… I have been busy," the Doctor suggested. "The Time Lords…" he started. "You are right… they would have… passed judgement from… on high… and would have done… nothing… but the Time Lords… are gone… and I was… I was…" the Doctor paused putting his hand on the Perspex of Coljai's cell door for a moment to catch his breath. He then got the sonic screwdriver out and opened the cell door. "I am not… like them… never was… never fit in." He pulled a phial of serum from his pocket. "The antibodies… in my blood… form the base… of this… all lab tests… show it will work… but I have… no live virus… to test it on."

"You want to give me the dose?" Coljai asked him.

"It will work… or not… it will do… you no harm… if it is…not effect… effective… let me… give you… the drug… can test blood… tomorrow for… virus."

"You must return to bed, Doctor," Coljai advised him seriously. He went to bang on the door in order to call the attention of the guards.

"No… not until… tested… my friends… won't… won't… understand," the Doctor's hands were shaking and his vision swam. He could feel that his right heart was hammering. It was not in synch with his left. He should not have gone without his medication. Coljai had to catch the Doctor's arm or he would have gone down heavily. Instead he guided him over to the bench in the cell. The Doctor realised he had put himself in a highly vulnerable position. If Coljai wanted to he could take the sonic screwdriver, let his colleagues out, and then attempt to escape. Even if they didn't get far the Doctor would be in immense trouble.

Coljai took the phial of the medication. "How much of it do I take?"

"All…" the Doctor watched as Coljai took the phial and drew up the serum into the syringe he had given and then injected it into his own vein. "You trust… me?" the Doctor was surprised. He'd expected some resistance.

"If you wished to kill me then there are easier ways," Coljai advised. "Now please? You must return to your medical team and take your medications." Coljai helped the Doctor to rise but his knees started to go when he was halfway across the cell. Coljai lowered him to the floor again.

"No… outside… or…" the Doctor struggled to get any words out.

"I need to get you outside the cell and seal myself in. If you're in here or I am out there then you will never get back in here and we won't know if the serum works," Coljai realised what the Doctor was trying to say. He assisted the Doctor out of the cell and made sure that he was seated at the back of the corridor leaning against the wall. Coljai went back inside. "You can lock the door now, Doctor?" Coljai suggested. The Doctor raised his hand to lock the door and then slid the screwdriver back into his pocket. He had to get back to Martha now. He could get to the security desk and get them to fetch her for him. He used the wall to get back to his feet but he only managed a couple of steps before the world spinning around him greyed out and his senses faded.

"Help!" Coljai banged on the glass. He hit his intercom and banged and shouted. The custody officer came in expecting it to be because the Doctor was somehow distressing him from outside the cell. He did not blame him if he was since they were the men who had injured him. He would have given him a couple of minutes with the door opened if he was well enough and he asked. The Doctor was a hero and they had hurt him. When he went into the corridor he saw that the Doctor was lying on the floor and not moving. He raised an immediate alarm to the medical team and then went to try to administer any first aid he could. Thankfully he was breathing so all he did was turn him more onto his side and make sure he stayed that way.

By the time Martha arrived the Doctor had regained consciousness and was arguing with the custody officer who was not letting him move and still had him laid in a close approximation to the human version of the recovery position on the floor. At least he had done that, but he could get up and go and report to Martha himself and he wasn't letting him.

"What happened?" Martha asked as she crouched down, having to alter her position because she did not have a cast or boot protecting her ankle and she could not yet crouch like that. She knelt instead. "Doctor?"

"I'm okay, I'm fine," he offered clearly and without any major breathlessness.

"He was out cold on the floor!"

"Yes, okay, but now I am not," the Doctor advised plainly. "And, since I am not out cold as you so dramatically put it and I am still on the floor which is rather uncomfortable I would appreciate it if you would let me get up?" the Doctor announced. "And be out of your way?" he added to the desk officer. "I mean, don't you have duties to attend to?"

"I'm not leaving you on your own when you've just been out cold on the floor. I told you that and the way you were panting when you got here?" the desk officer suggested. "I'm not leaving you."

"And quite right too. I thank you for your concern and for raising your alarm, but now Doctor Jones is here so clearly I am not on my own," The Doctor argued. "Martha, will you please tell him?"

"I am not interested in your petty squabbling, Doctor. I would quite like to know what has been going on in here and why you are on the floor in the first place. Were you panting when you got here?" Martha asked him.

"He said he had been running," the desk officer advised.

"May I offer some insight?" Coljai asked from within his cell.

"No you cannot!" the desk officer leapt up and banged on the Perspex with his fist. "You are the one who did this to him! Don't think we don't know that you did! Don't you know who that man is?! What he has done?! And look what you have done to him! You can shut your filthy mouth!"

"There is no need for that," the Doctor stated.

"I think you can go to your desk now," Martha advised the officer. "Thank you for calling me." She offered. The desk officer left, but not before he heard Martha address the prisoner. "Coljai? Did you see what happened?"

"Based on the damage done by the latter stages of the virus to the victim's hearts and the interventions carried out, and the fact that the Doctor was in fact breathless on his arrival and stated that he had taken no medications that morning, I would suggest he suffered an acute arrhythmia. It caused him to lose consciousness but that allowed it to reset," Coljai offered.

"Is that what happened?" Martha asked the Time Lord directly.

"I think so," the Doctor agreed. He let Martha listen to his chest. "I didn't like it much."

"Why didn't you take your medication this morning?"

"I had something to do," the Doctor advised. "I didn't think I really needed it anymore."

"What is more important than making sure you continue to recover?" Martha asked the Doctor.

"Nothing," the Doctor commented and looked to Coljai. The Bylaxian nodded understanding that the Doctor didn't want Martha to know that he was trying to help them despite her continuing efforts to reverse what they had done to him.

"You are an idiot. What if you'd not had a mild arrhythmia but had another heart attack? Or what if you'd jarred your shoulder again?" Martha asked him.

"Then you'd fix me because you're brilliant," the Doctor commented and then grinned at Martha broadly. She knew he knew she couldn't get too mad at him when he was like that so she just swatted at him with the rubber of her stethoscope. "I'm okay."

"You're not okay, Doctor. You are going back to bed now and you are having your medication and you are to stay in bed until at least two hours after lunch," she told him.

"Fine, that is okay, can I get up now?"

"Yes, but slowly," Martha warned.

"And, can I have this thing off?" he pulled at the collar and cuff supporting his shoulder.

"Don't push it when you've just been a big idiot," Martha offered. He got to his feet. A brief wash of dizziness went unnoticed. It was just a slight delay in his blood pressure accounting for his vertical stance. There was a jeep outside waiting to transport them back to medical. The Doctor was sent back to bed by Martha with his drugs and another stern word, though Martha did send the orthopaedist in to check his shoulder and he was allowed to lose the collar and cuff and begin using his arm properly. That was good. That would make flying the TARDIS much easier.


	22. Chapter 22

The following day the Doctor waited until after he'd had his medication before slipping out of the medical area. He accepted that he had been silly going before breakfast the previous day and that yes he did still need the medication or why was Martha insisting on him taking it. Martha was going to look into the suitability of drugs that he could also take if he had an episode of arrhythmia to prevent a collapse but he didn't think he wanted to go down that route. He wanted it fixed.

He needed to test Coljai's blood for live virus in order to see if the serum he had created had worked. It was going to work. There was no reason why it wouldn't work. If it didn't work then it was a Bylaxian anomaly and not something to do with his own antibodies or scientific know how.

He would have to go to the TARDIS get the equipment to take a blood sample, then go to the security building to take the blood if he could even gain access after the day before, then he'd have to return to the TARDIS to do the tests, and then he'd have to go back to the security building and gain further access to the custody suite to give Coljai a prognosis. He didn't think he'd be able to make four trips across base without collapsing with the drugs he'd taken.

He went into the TARDIS. The ship had promised Martha that she would not take him away from UNIT until she discharged him and said he was well enough, but that didn't mean she couldn't take a quick jump across the base. He piloted her out of the secure bay where she was being held and into the back of Coljai's cell. UNIT really needed to work on their level of security as he stepped out into the cell. Coljai looked very surprised to see him there. He had feared the Doctor's down turn may have prevented the promise of a cure for his people.

"How are you feeling today, Doctor?" Coljai asked him. "You appear to have more colour?"

"I feel better thanks, but, how are you feeling? Any noticeable effects from the serum?"

"I did experience some abdominal cramping but nothing severe," Coljai advised.

"That may have just been the food," the Doctor offered.

"Perhaps," Coljai agreed and smiled. "There are plenty of palliatives available on Bylax for cramping if it is a side effect."

"Should we see if it has worked?" the Doctor asked.

"I am most anxious to find out."

"Come with me," the Doctor offered. "But, I warn you, I may not be fit enough to intervene if you try something, but this is my TARDIS and she will intervene. She's not very happy with what you did to me, so I'd recommend you do what I say and you don't touch anything," the Doctor warned the Bylaxian. As he walked across the console the TARDIS darkened slightly. "It is okay, old girl," the Doctor offered and Coljai felt the reception lift.

"I don't blame her for being angry with us for what we did to you, Doctor," Coljai advised. "I don't quite understand why you are now helping us?"

"It is not your daughter's fault that you did not just ask," the Doctor offered. "Nor is it the fault of any other Bylaxian children. I only hope that this has worked." He took a sample of Coljai's blood in the TARDIS lab. He trusted that Coljai was not going to try to escape. The fate of his people would be at risk if he did. He ran the blood sample through the TARDIS mainframe and she produced a chart.

"Your blood is clear," the Doctor announced. "There are a few dead viral cells remaining but there is no live virus at all. That is excellent," he offered. "I have already programmed the TARDIS to create an initial 5000 doses for you and I will give you the preparation and a replication module so you can make more doses. I can only give one replication module but that should be enough to make 50,000 doses in a day. It will enable you to begin a treatment program."

"How can we make more if we don't have access to your antibodies?"

"Forgive me, Coljai, but I am not entirely trusting and have eliminated the DNA from the serum. It can be manufactured using the replication module and a simple albumen based protein gel," the Doctor advised.

"You, Sir, are a genius."

"Yes, I know," the Doctor commented and winked cheekily.

"Your friend Martha, she said you were when we were on the ship. I did not expect you to survive and I don't think she did either. She worked so hard to save your life. She told me that you were the most accomplished scientist that she knew of and that if we had asked then you would have helped. She was right, and, I am sorry for the suffering we have caused you."

"I understand why you did what you did and I understand why you think what you thought of Time Lords, but, you should have asked me and you have caused me a lot of suffering and I am not yet healed and able to leave here."

"Then you won't be able to take the cure to Bylax?" Coljai asked worried that it might be for nothing.

"I won't be doing that," the Doctor commented. "I assume that you have a vessel that remains undiscovered?"

"Yes, it is close to where we found you," Coljai confirmed.

"You have the coordinates for it?" the Doctor checked and Coljai gave them to him. The Doctor got the TARDIS to create two more doses of the virus. He opened the cell he was in and then went to each of Coljai's companions and gave them a dose of it. He then set the TARDIS off making the replicated serum, deciding to make more than the initial 5000 doses. The TARDIS would be able to do it more quickly and the Bylaxians weren't going anywhere and it would give him a better idea of making sure there was no delayed side effects. Time Lord based products could be dangerous to species that were not as robust, he had taken the DNA out of it, but it would be better to check for a couple of days.

Three days later the UNIT base descended into chaos. The alarm was raised. Somehow the three Bylaxian prisoners had simply vanished out of their cells and had escaped and the cells remained locked and secure. There was so much activity in and around the base as every available staff member searched the base that had been put on lock down that no one logged that the Doctor had failed to show up for a cardiology stress test.

He wandered back into his room an hour or so after the alarm had been heard. The search was still ongoing. No one had breached the base perimeter so there was a chance that they were hiding on base. When the Doctor came back into his room, stopping for a cup of tea on the way, he was surprised to see that his bed was occupied by Captain Jack.

"Oh, hello Jack, I'm surprised to see you here. I thought you might be out helping to look for the Bylaxians? I heard they have escaped."

"I would look," Jack commented. "If I thought there might be any chance of finding them, because, you see? When I heard they had escaped my first concern was that they might find the TARDIS, so I went to check she remained secure. Except, do you know what I found, Doctor?"

"Um, no?"

"The TARDIS was gone," Jack advised him. "And, since you're not having a second coronary about now, I think you know that I found that she was gone. Is she back where she was now?" Jack asked him.

"Yes."

"You took them home?"

"No, I need to recover more before I can undertake and trips like that. A quick hop across town to their ship was about all I can manage," he admitted.

"So they can get home now?"

"Yes, they are on their way."

"I suppose all three of them are infected. It would have been a life sentence for them," Jack advised. "At least they get to spend their last few months or however long they have with their families," Jack suggested and the Doctor nodded. Jack looked at him suspiciously. "What?"

"I gave them the cure," the Doctor advised.

"You did what?!"

"I used the antibodies in my blood stream to create a cure for the virus."

"Are you mad?!" Jack demanded of him.

"Um…"

"Look at you?! You can barely last half a day without needing to go to bed because of what they did to you. I know they are dying and I can get showing them a bit of compassion and letting them go home, but they showed you none. They would have killed you and now you've given a species with that lack of regard for medical ethics a cure based on your antibodies and your cellular structure. What are they going to do with Time Lord DNA?"

"Nothing."

"What, because they said so?" Jack shook his head.

"No, because I screened it. It contains no Time Lord DNA. I used my antibodies for a base and manufactured screened version. It tested it on Coljai as he was the fittest of them. It worked and I gave it to the others too. Then I got the TARDIS to make it flat out for two days and they have doses to treat their worst 200,000 and I've given them the preparation and a replication module and then I gave them a lift to their ship. That is all, so, to answer your question, no. I am not mad."

"Are you sure? You've done all that when you should be resting in bed. You look knackered."

"I am knackered. I came back here with a cup of tea with the express intention of getting straight into bed," the Doctor advised. "There is someone else in it."

"Oh," Jack jumped back off his bed and straightened it back out for him. "Sorry."

An hour later Martha came into the room with Donna and a rather edgy looking senior officer. The officer apologised to the Doctor and admitted that they had lost the men who had caused him so much harm. They had somehow wipe out all CCTV records and had gotten out of their cells. They did not know where they were but they had tracked a strange energy signature and an object leaving Earth's gravity field. It looked like they had escaped and left the planet. Thankfully for the senior officer the Doctor did not react as badly to the news as he expected. He just nodded and then suggested that he was feeling rather drained and much to Jack and Martha's surprise he slept the afternoon away for the first time in over a week.

Five weeks later the Doctor was finally discharged. He still had two weeks of medication to continue to take and he managed to persuade Martha that the best way to ensure he carried on taking it until the end of the course was if she took some leave. She could make sure he took it and she could strengthen her ankle up and they could all go and have a couple of weeks holiday. Martha agreed. Jack and Donna were on board too and the Doctor promised them a festival with absolutely no running. Neither he nor Martha were quite up for that yet.

The Doctor piloted the TARDIS. He opened the door to a riot of colour, noise, and celebration. A festival eleven years in advance on Bylax to mark the ten year anniversary of the total eradication of a virus that threatened to destroy Bylaxian civilisation and to honour a nameless physician who had assisted them when they had done great harm to him.

The Doctor sought out Coljai. 11 years on his 12 year old daughter was married and had born him a granddaughter just days earlier. It was a double celebration for Coljai and his family. He never believed that he would be able to see her. When his daughter was struck with the virus he never believed that she would be able to bear children if she survived and here she was with a healthy daughter.

"Coljai," the Doctor went up to him and shook his hand. Coljai didn't say anything but he shook the Doctor's hand. Coljai invited them to remain with their family and enjoy a meal, but that was not entirely appropriate since there was still a lot of animosity from Jack and Donna about what had been done by Coljai to the Doctor. It was the Doctor's strength and Martha's intervention that allowed the Doctor to survive. Sitting down to share a meal with the man who had done it was different to having a meal as part of a festival to celebrate success over the virus. They enjoyed the festival but not with Coljai, as anonymous visitors to the planet.

"I knew you had something to do with their escape," Donna accused the Doctor quietly. The festival was not yet finished and Jack was off dancing with Martha, but the Time Lord was tired and ready to return to the TARDIS. Donna linked arms with him and walked with him past other revellers who were still going strong. "And, a nameless physician?" she checked. "You gave them the cure?"

"Yeah," the Doctor accepted.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Donna asked him curious as to why she didn't know he had done that.

"I wasn't sure you would understand," the Doctor admitted. Donna looked at the Time Lord. He still wasn't 100% and it was two months since they had found him on that boat. They had caused him so much pain and quite literally heart ache. She didn't think she did understand fully how he could have given them the cure when they had done all they had to him. They had almost lost him, and what? He'd got out of his sick bed, made the cure, and then sent them home? They paused as a group of children dressed in colour clothing, laughing, and joking and blowing coloured bubbles up into the air ran past. She smiled and hugged the Doctor.

"Dumbo," Donna commented and held him tightly. "Of course I understand."


End file.
